This time it's personal


From Glen Greenwald comes this list of Assange's problems.

Funny how you can endanger the lives of soldiers and civilians fighting the good fight in Afghanistan and all you get is praise like it's the second coming of the pentagon papers.

But embarrass Foggy Bottom and it's all out war

Welcome to the New Reformation


I haven't seen this particular historical analogy used yet


A few years ago everyone was gushing about the Internet being the new printing press and how it's going to usher a new age and disrupt all the old hierarchies just like the Gutenberg Machine did.

But the most immediate (for old times values of "immediate") result of movable type printing was the Reformation.

So the Tea Party in the USA is The Reformation II

With Academia as the Catholic Church, the MSM as the Inquisition and the Political Class as the European Aristocracy.

I guess that would make Glenn Beck Martin Luther and Sarah Palin some sort of a Galileo/Cromwell combo (she fought the New Inquisition,lost but was not cowed and she's also the unofficial general of the new model army(of davids) that's going to make some heads roll)

The funniest Israel Boycott page EVER!

take a look

Well , not really the funniest
Just funny

It's not just the usual suspects like Intel (Macs are for tossers anyways) or Disney (and I'm sure uncle Walt is spinning in his grave thinking he's associated with us) it's also the WTF things like the White Barn Candle Co. (Never heard of them, they sell scented candle apparently)

It's always so heartwarming to find out how deep and vast the Zionist Conspiracy is

The EU "constitution"

If the people who object to the currently proposed EU constitution don't come up with an alternative constitution they will wake up one day with the present one as the law of the land.
Because the chattering classes would keep on trying to foist their creation on everyone until they succeed . The way to block this is to Ju-Jitsu(?) them and use their own momentum to get the USA constitution ( or a close facsimile of) approved instead.

A modest suggestion , no?

Cousin Daphna makes a funny

From BackSpin : Weighing in links to a Guardian article by Daphna Baram called Sharon's cellmate

She makes all the usual noises , rabid ken is NOT a racist , Sharon is a war criminal and so on..
and then comes the twist
Everything that is said about Ariel Sharon (war , occupation ,death ) can also be said about Tony Blair so :

The final paragraph

"So my message to the British left is: either moderate your language when talking
about Sharon, or escalate it when talking about Blair. One way or another, it is
time to set equal standards. "

Couldn't have said it better myself
The thing is that knowing Daphna there is the possibility that she is in earnest about this and isn't just being sarcastic. I wonder how she'll rationalize it when her leftist british acquaintances never change their tone re Blair .

( the title of the backspin post is a personal dig about daphna's figure which I think they(he?) deserves a slap for)

He was a skeptic

In Allah's old/new site
( He was my first blogger so I like to check up on him from time to time )
He posted a link to a transcript of a critique by Martin Kramer of Natan Sharansky's new book "The Case for Democracy ".

Mr (Dr?) Kramer is far less sanguine about the chances of democracy in the middle east than Sharansky or the neo-con cabal are.

He defines two kinds of freedoms people aspire to

One he calls " freedom of " , which is the traditional western concept of individual political rights like freedom of speech , freedom of assembly , religious freedom and so on .
The other kind of freedom he calls "freedom from " and that is the freedom of the ethnic , religious or kinship group from government oppression.
people who want freedom from government oppression for their own group might not be all that interested in democracy where their ability to oppress other groups ( like women of infidels or ethnic minorities) is curtailed.

To prove his claim that the majority of middle easterners are more of the "freedom from" kind of people he quotes Elie Kedourie's description of the Syrians

"they have never been much accustomed to being asked their opinion about
their rulers. For them the happy man has always been he who has a beautiful
wife, a comfortable house, a lucrative occupation, who does not know
government, and whom government does not know; in short, the private man."

Call me crazy but this is the description of a hobbit or what the americans would call a small government social conservative.
(The very group the neo-cons came from!)

Wanting to be free from government oppression AND being more interested in whatever your own group is is a universal and not unique to the arabs or muslims
the difference between them and the west is that the west figured out 800 to 50 years ago that the only way to guaranty freedom from government oppression is to have stuff like freedom of speech and assembly.

Can the west/USA force that understanding unto arab and muslim societies?
That's what's worth a try

The Israeli Supreme Court ruling as the High Court of Justice has decreed that the knesset parliamentary committee must " re-examine " it's decision NOT to withdraw the immunity of one of the MK's

Judicial coup anyone ?