In a real sense, with Mubarak's departure the demons of September 11 were finally exorcised across the region, unleashing a wave of hopeful protest that shows little signs of abating any time soon.By Mark LeVine (pronounced as "Leh-Vee-Neigh"), professor of history at UC Irvine and senior visiting researcher at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden.
If you are already packing for the December event predicted by the Mayan calendar, you may want to reconsider the urgency. It appears that the Maya scientists were a bit hasty:
The end of the world will be coming in just another 48 years, in 2060, according to the father of modern physics, Isaac Newton, who died in 1727. His calculations were not based on mathematical principles or the laws of physics, but instead on the Christian Bible and the Book of Daniel from the Hebrew Bible.So, if you planned to unload your vintage Shelby Cobra and spend the proceeds of the sale in wanton debauchery till December 21, hold your horses. You 401K and IBM stock may have more time to mature yet...
...
Newton dated the end of days from the crowning of Charlemagne as Roman emperor in the year 800 C.E. and based on information in the Book of Daniel, which he believed projected an end of days 1,260 years later, in 2060.
Since the Mad Haiku's site is somewhat peculiar as far as linking to a selected post is concerned, I had to resort to making a snapshot of that superb example of the genre:
That one really warmed my heart's cockles, I have to admit, as it would undoubtedly do for any software development veteran. Click to enlarge only if you read Russian, otherwise proceed to the translation.
One of the examples of a bulky and, in the authors' opinion, useless upper layer, is the integrated system Windows by the Microsoft company. This system occupies almost 1 MB of the disk memory and is designed to be used mostly with a device called "mouse"...
... Obviously the reader has already understood that among the additional layers over DOS there are some useless systems, only looking good, but in reality only wasting user's time, disk memory and the computer's operational memory. The deceptive beauty of such systems, however, has a strong influence on an unsophisticated users without computer experience.
The mental inertia, in the author's experience, could be so strong that the people who started with using one of such systems, could be hardly forced to learn DOS commands afterward. We'd like to forewarn our readers against making this mistake.
[List of three authors]
"Personal Computers in Engineering Practice", 1992
The world has had barely a few days since the (temporary) demise of SOPA and PIPA, but it appears that vigilance couldn't be relaxed even for a minute. Another attack on Internet freedoms is rising its homely head, albeit in a smaller way - in state of Maine.
In Maine a rich lawyer who ran for governor in 2010 is challenging that right. He was offended and annoyed by a site called "The Cutler Files". The site dedicated itself to educating its readers about what Elliot Cutler got up to his long legal career. This was not made up of smears or rants against Cutler, it was merely a collection of links and quotes of press about the man.The establishment is seemingly united against the blogger, with the following argument:
Elliot Cutler is not Maine's governor, Paul LePage is the governor. Cutler lost by less than 1% to LePage and blames the Cutler files for his loss. This bitterness has led him to go after those behind the blog with all his might.
As a practical matter, allowing any individual or organization — let alone a paid political consultant, working for an opposing candidate in the same election — to anonymously advocate for or against a candidate would undermine the commission's ability to enforce Maine's campaign finance laws," the commission's filing says.Strange that, denying a person his rights to free speech because it will "undermine" the commission ability to calculate the financial impact of the blogger on the election. Common sense would say... but let's leave the common sense alone, there still is that darn first amendment. And whatever a person writes in his blog in his own free time shouldn't be anyone's business - unless the contents are clearly and provably libelous, of course.
Much of the Maine press is fully behind Cutler.If true (I don't read the Maine press myself), this is another instance of that prevailing instinctive animosity that the mainstream media displays toward the blogger's world. Especially when the blogger succeeds to unearth and to focus the public attention on facts that the mainstream media itself brought up at different times and for some reason conveniently forgot to do the same when it was really needed - e.g. at the election time.
I've only just discovered the Henry Jackson Society. I realise that this is rather remiss of me, but there's a lot out there on the internet, and, sadly, one can't know it all. Which is why there are places like Simply Jews, to lead us to these oases of good sense and rationality. I was led to the HJS by being directed to a speech at a Cambridge Union debate on the Middle East by Douglas Murray, and was so impressed that I googled the HJS. You, too, might find the reason for its name interesting. On my first visit to its website, I discovered that among the HJS writers is Robin Shepherd owner/publisher of The Commentator, another of my regular stops on the net.
On this, my first visit to the site, I found a fascinating article by the said Douglas Murray, and it's on that old 'friend' of the left (or one part of it , at least), Ken Livingstone. For those not Brits or unaware of who this charmer is, he was elected Mayor of London for two terms on the Labour ticket (although, strictly speaking, the first time he was an 'independent'). Trouble is, he has a number of traits that one wouldn't normally associate with the conventional left, unless we're talking of Nick Cohen's "Progressive Left", of course. One of them has led to the coining of the phrase "The Livingstone Formulation" - go to Engage, and put those two words into its own search engine. You'll get interesting results: try it here.
Another of his traits is to associate with misogynists, homophobes and anti-Semites…and get away with it, of course, because he's on the 'left', as Murray puts it. I wish to make it clear that, despite his dubious connections, no-one (and certainly not me) is accusing Livingstone of being a misogynist, etc, just of associating with them. Murray makes this point specifically when he says, right at the start of his column, "When is a homophobic comment not a homophobic comment? When it is spoken by somebody on the ‘left’ of course."
Murray hammers home this point when he continues "If the Conservative party, let alone a Conservative Mayor of London, continually praised one of the world’s leading advocates of genocide against the Jews, and advocate of the murder of gays, as a ‘moderate’ and ‘reformer’, then the presence of that politician at the top of British politics would be impossible." In that sentence is a link to a You Tube clip of al-Qaeadawi heaping praise on Hitler for the Shoah, and hoping that next time, "it will be at the hands of the believers". Lovely man; lovely supporters.
And Livingstone hopes to be the next Mayor of London - again. I consider myself a recidivist Labour voter (one who continually re-offends). But this recidivist Labour supporter has found his limit, again.
See the whole article (and introduce yourself to the valuable Henry Jackson Society website) here:
By Brian Goldfarb.
This is now old news, because the report is dated October 2009. It started in the New York Times, not noted, I understand from American watchers of these things, for its sympathy for Israel these days: indeed, some have bracketed the NYT with The Guardian for the well-known sympathy for Israel both have shown in the recent past. That last sentence, by the way, is a dictionary definition of the use of irony - in practice, the opposite of what one means.
The item was then picked up by NGO Monitor, and thus, it's here. I thought it worth rescuing this old story because we're all in danger of mistaking form for substance, and an organisation called Human Rights Watch sounds as though it should be monitoring breaches of such things. Not anymore, according to the founder, Robert L. Bernstein. He founded it in 1978 and was the founding Chairman for 20 years and, at the time of writing, had been Founding Chairman emeritus for 10 years. But the organisation, Bernstein says, "[having] had as its original mission to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters[has more] recently...been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state."
Well, nothing new there: plenty of organisations and groups are doing that, all over the place. Why worry about one more, we might ask ourselves. Because, Bernstein continues, "we (the original HRW, that is) always recognized that open, democratic societies have faults and commit abuses. But we saw that they have the ability to correct them — through vigorous public debate, an adversarial press and many other mechanisms that encourage reform. That is why we sought to draw a sharp line between the democratic and nondemocratic worlds, in an effort to create clarity in human rights."
You'll get the point that Bernstein sees Israel as one of those capable of correcting the abuses and failings, unlike closed, undemocratic societies. Indeed, he more than makes the point when he goes on to note that "Israel, with a population of 7.4 million, is home to at least 80 human rights organizations, a vibrant free press, a democratically elected government, a judiciary that frequently rules against the government, a politically active academia, multiple political parties and, judging by the amount of news coverage, probably more journalists per capita than any other country in the world — many of whom are there expressly to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Of course, Bernstein goes on to draw the obvious lesson concerning the Arab societies that surround Israel.
By Brian Goldfarb.
Update: An Open Letter to Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch. Read it and see for yourself what HRW turned into these days...
And thanks to Petra Marquardt-Bigman for the tip.
Of course calling the drill that has reached through 3,768 meters of ice to the Antarctic sub-glacial lake Vostok "little" is an understatement. After all, the drill didn't damage the Earth axis. But, compared to its size, it surely has shaken our fundamental beliefs.
After decades of drilling, Russian scientists have finally managed to pierce through Antarctica’s ice sheet to reveal the secrets of a unique sub-glacial lake, Vostok, that has been sealed there for the past 20 million years, a scientific source said on Monday.And I don't mean all manner of prehistoric creatures that will be gradually raised from the lake to shock and awe many a modern biologist.
With the current events happening at Lake Vostok, an old theory saying that German Nazis may have built a secret base there as early as the 1930s, has resurfaced.Surely you have discerned that smirking style: "It is thought...", "According to German archives", "It is also rumored" etc. Rumored my foot! Of course, existence of the Nazi base was suspected by many and for a fairly long time. But only now we have the real truth. And real proof.
It is thought that towards the end of the Second World War, the Nazis moved to the South Pole and started constructing a base at Lake Vostok. In 1943, Grand Admiral Karl Dontiz was quoted saying “Germany's submarine fleet is proud that it created an unassailable fortress for the Fuehrer on the other end of the world,” in Antarctica.
According to German naval archives, months after Germany surrendered to the Allies in April, 1945, the German submarine U-530 arrived at the South Pole from the Port of Kiel. Crewmembers constructed an ice cave and supposedly stored several boxes of relics from the Third Reich, including Hitler’s secret files.
It is also rumored that later the submarine U-977 delivered the remains of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun to Antarctica for DNA cloning purposes.
You know, I thought that The New Statesman had got over its hang-up about Israel after it had the grace (or was forced?) to apologise for its "A Kosher Conspiracy?" front cover of a Magen David piercing a union flag. I should have known better, of course. The New Statesman (hereafter NS) is, after all, the weekly paper of record for the "progressive left" of the UK. Well, a couple of days back, Robin Shepherd, owner/publisher of that excellent on-line paper The Commentator, drew all of our attention to an article just published by the NS by the ever-reliable Ben White: ever-reliable, that is, to attack Israel from all the wrong angles. Although I have included a link to the NS article below, Shepherd tells us all we really need to know in a long and well-argued article (more importantly, the first link below).
Shepherd lets us know the context of his concerns very early in the piece, when he says that "In the context of Iranian threats to destroy the country, the loss of Turkey as an ally and the new pre-eminence of extreme, anti-Israeli Islamists in Egypt, the rantings of Western anti-Zionists have now acquired a new and more dangerous significance."
Among these, of course, are the sayings of Ben White. Shepherd goes on to note that
I[Shepherd] make[s] no direct analogy, but enter Ben White, author of, “Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide“. On Sunday, he published an extensive piece in the leading weekly magazine of the British Left, The New Statesman. Essentially, it’s a trash job on Israeli democracy. It, perversely, charges a British pro-Israel grouping, BICOM, with having unwittingly revealed, in a series of recent essays, that Israel is not in fact a proper democracy at all: it’s a racist “ethnocracy“ run by and for Jews.Back in the days when White still spoke to mere mortals who disagreed with him (by commenting on Engage, for example), I recall (along with others) taking him to task for his use of this word - "ethnocracy" - because the last thing Israel was or is is an ethnically homogeneous society. In comparison, in terms of those who are actually citizens (as opposed to actually entitled to enter and remain, legally, within its borders, such as all European Union citizens), somewhere like Britain is actually less diverse than Israel. After all, the vast majority of those who are UK citizens were actually born and bred within its borders; which is far more than can be said of Israel. If White were to substitute something like "a uni-religious society", he would be far more accurate. But the term would apply just as much to the UK, where something like 90% or more of the population would, if forced, acknowledge that they were Christian rather than anything else.
Mostly, [White's article is] a re-hash of the old arguments that because Israel is a Jewish state it can’t be a true democracy. The fact that it’s had an elected parliament for longer than almost half the countries in the European Union – the 10 members from central and eastern Europe plus Spain, Portugal and Greece – is obviously not mentioned. Nor is the fact that it has one of the finest supreme courts in the world. Nor is the fact that Arabs in Israel have a tradition of living in a liberal-democratic environment that has been absent for Arabs living anywhere else in the region. (And the way things are going that is not likely to change due to the so-called “Arab Spring. “)Anyway, enough from me. The Shepherd article is here, and the link to the New Statesman is here.
Nick Cohen (he of "What's Left?") really is one of the good guys. If his website isn't on your personal list of places to visit once a week or so, then it should be (he said, with the "now listen to me" tone of the ex-teacher). He's just published a new book on censorship, "You Can't Read This Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom" (out now and available for your e-book reader!), and I've been trying to follow his comments and articles on his website. The core of this particular article is contained in this quote: 'When I was researching You Can't Read This Book, my study of censorship, an old joke came back to me. "You can be a famous poisoner or a successful poisoner but you can't be both". Successful censorship is hidden.'
Of course, as good liberals, whatever party we actually vote for (liberal is used here in the old(very old)-fashioned sense that John Stuart Mill used it - one who is a free, self-conscious and radical thinker for themselves), we already knew that. What makes the article relevant (and it isn't because it appears in the Jewish Chronicle) is that Cohen, as non-Jew, has always been aware and sensitive to the virulence of those who are antisemitic and who should know better: the supposed Left. Thus, we have this comment, almost immediately after the quote above: "Alarmingly, considering the virulence of its antisemitism, radical Islam is too hot to handle."
Cohen's goodness, honesty and bravery is illustrated by the story he tells in the Foreword to "What's Left?": when he wrote an article that preceded this book, the first email he got was from Anne Leslie (older British readers will remember her as a stalwart of the right-wing - but then honest with it - Daily Mail) congratulating him on his honesty on the topic but warning him that he wouldn't believe the storm of antisemitic hate mail he was about to get. He says, in his own words, that he didn't believe her, but, that it when it did come, his first reaction was "But I'm not Jewish". More important was his second reaction: "That's irrelevant. This is terrible." That set him on his current path. We should all support him and lend power to his elbow.
I don't usually promote books, but Cohen's book on censorship is available from amazon.co.uk for £7.99 with free postage and on your e-book reader for the same price (bookshop price £12.99).
The article that sparked this posting is here.
By Brian Goldfarb.
According to JP:
Joe Eszterhas says he's convinced 'Passion of the Christ' director is right choice for film about hero Judah Maccabee.If there ever was a good time to say "oy vey", this is it, methinks.
This week, Crazy Bald Guy, Maggie’s Notebook, The Independent Sentinel and Capitalist Preservation took advantage of my generous offer of link whorage and earned honorable mention status.
You can, too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.
Simply head over to Joshuapundit and post the title a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address ( which won’t be published) in the comments section no later than Monday 6PM PST in order to be considered for our honorable mention category, and return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week.
It’s a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members. while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?
So, let’s see what we have this week….
Lots of people seem to believe that President Obama is anti-Israel, or at least, not terribly pro-Israel. Although I'm not an American citizen, and, indeed, don't live in the US, so I'm not as close to the US media as many who make this comment, I've yet to see anything that shows that he is less pro-Israel than his recent predecessors. On the contrary, he is always stressing, in my view, his support for Israel to exist in peace and security. I could, for example, post his address to both Houses of the British Parliament of 25 May, 2011, where he makes this point (among others), concerning the right of Israel to exist in peace and security and also that it faces existential threats to that existence; his speech to the UN on 21 September last, where he specifically, again, addresses this matter; or, perhaps, his Rosh Hashonah message of 27 September 2011, despite the the rather nasty comments that start off the list below the YouTube video - most of which appear to be from the usual anti-Israel, anti-Obama and, indeed, anti-African-American crowd.
However, I'm not going to post those (though, if you don't have them, I'm happy to provide links to them), but rather, the brief email message from JTA that popped into my inbox this pm. It's all of 5 paragraphs long, two of those consisting of one sentence and a third of two whole, but short, sentences. The meat of the report is the following:
President Obama expanded Iran sanctions to include parties dealing with Iran's Central Bank.The executive order made public Monday and issued by the White House on Sunday cuts Iran's economy off from the United States' entirely by expanding existing sanctions to include those who deal with Iran's Central Bank, forcing interlocutors to choose between the two countries.On the face of it, of course, this has nothing to do with Israel. But, as we all know, the immediate target of any Iranian nuclear warhead would be Israel. This is despite some commentators claiming that Ahmanedinejad really has the Arab world's oil fields in his sights. Why? Arab oil states he is politically opposed to: that's just politics, and he can possibly be rational about that. However, as a paid-up member of the antisemites league of nations, Israel he hates (and the rest of the world's Jews aren't far behind), so Israel, on past behaviour, would be his first target. Anything that slows him down has to be good.
