I'm underemployed, recurringly housebound with insanely painful now-sporadic (when I have meds) gout, an enlarged heart, and other health problems, particularly including lifelong recurring severe clinical depression. See here for a major crisis. I'm also sometimes available to some degree as a paid writer or researcher. This is a previous update on my situation & this -- and this from December 19th, 2005 update.
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Sanely free of McCarthyite calling anyone a "traitor" since 2001!
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"The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include With ease, and you beside"
-- Emily Dickinson
"We will pursue peace as if there is no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there is no peace."
-- Yitzhak Rabin
"I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be."
-- Alexander Hamilton
"The stakes are too high for government to be a spectator sport."
-- Barbara Jordan
"Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to
trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule --
and both commonly succeed, and are right."
-- H. L. Mencken
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
"The only completely consistent people are the dead."
-- Aldous Huxley
"I have had my solutions for a long time; but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them."
-- Karl F. Gauss
"Whatever evils either reason or declamation have imputed to extensive empire,
the power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind;
and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices, diffused likewise
the improvements of social life."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his
expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were
respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom."
-- Edward Gibbon
"There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify
the evils, of the present times."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Our youth now loves luxuries. They have bad manners, contempt for authority.
They show disrespect for elders and they
love to chatter instead of exercise.
Children are now tyrants, not the servants, of their households. They
no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
chatter before company, gobble up their food, and tyrannize
their teachers."
-- Socrates
"Before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments."
-- Sidney Hook
"Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness."
-- Sidney Hook
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect
disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest
and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
"Faced with the choice of all the land without a Jewish state or a Jewish state without all the
land, we chose a Jewish state without all the land."
-- David Ben-Gurion
"...the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him
an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this
or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages
to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also
to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing,
with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess
and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminals who do not withstand such
temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the
opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction;
that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion
and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their
ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty,
because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of
judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square
with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil
government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts
against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if
left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has
nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her
natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is
permitted freely to contradict them.
-- Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson
"We don't live just by ideas. Ideas are part of the mixture of customs and practices,
intuitions and instincts that make human life a conscious activity susceptible to
improvement or debasement. A radical idea may be healthy as a provocation;
a temperate idea may be stultifying. It depends on the circumstances. One of the most
tiresome arguments against ideas is that their "tendency" is to some dire condition --
to totalitarianism, or to moral relativism, or to a war of all against all."
-- Louis Menand
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis."
-- Dante Alighieri
"He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers."
-- Henry B. Adams
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the
poor to beg in the streets, steal bread, or sleep under a bridge."
-- Anatole France
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
-- Edmund Burke
"Education does not mean that we have become certified experts in business or mining or botany or journalism or epistemology;
it means that through the absorption of the moral, intellectual, and esthetic inheritance of the race we have come to
understand and control ourselves as well as the external world; that we have chosen the best as our associates both in spirit
and the flesh; that we have learned to add courtesy to culture, wisdom to knowledge, and forgiveness to understanding."
-- Will Durant
"Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is
but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest
winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?"
-- Herman Melville
"The most important political office is that of the private citizen."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"It is an error to suppose that books have no influence; it is a slow influence, like flowing water carving out a canyon,
but it tells more and more with every year; and no one can pass an hour a day in the society of sages and heroes without
being lifted up a notch or two by the company he has kept."
-- Will Durant
"When you write, you’re trying to transpose what you’re thinking into something that is less like an annoying drone and more like a piece of music."
-- Louis Menand
"Sex is a continuum."
-- Gore Vidal
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802.
"The sum of our religion is peace and unanimity, but these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible,
and in many things leave one free to follow his own judgment, because there is great obscurity in many matters, and
man suffers from this almost congenital disease that he will not give in when once a controversy is started, and
after he is heated he regards as absolutely true that which he began to sponsor quite casually...."
-- Desiderius Erasmus
"Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read, and what we must disbelieve?"
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to N. G. Dufief, Philadelphia bookseller, 1814
"We are told that it is only people's objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort,
are 'objectively' aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once. The same argument is applied to Trotskyism. Trotskyists are often credited, at any rate by Communists, with being active and conscious agents of Hitler; but when you point out the many and obvious reasons why this is unlikely to be true,
the 'objectively' line of talk is brought forward again. To criticize the Soviet Union helps Hitler: therefore 'Trotskyism is Fascism'. And when this has been established, the accusation of conscious treachery is usually repeated.
This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people's motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions."
-- George Orwell, "As I Please," Tribune, 8 December 1944
"Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If 'needy' were a turn-on?"
-- "Aaron Altman," Broadcast News
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
-- Lewis Thomas
"To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times?"
-- Cicero
"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."
-- Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign
"Remember, Robin: evil is a pretty bad thing."
-- Batman
"Being evil is not a full-time job."
-- James Lileks
Gary Farber is now a licensed Double Super-Secret Master Pundit.
He does not always refer to himself in the third person.
Did he mention he was presently single?
The lutefisk is dead. Donate via the donation button on the top left
or I'll shoot this gefilte fish.
No, really, I seriously need the help at present. And I hate asking.
Current Total # of Donations Since Blog Began: 587
Subscribers to date at $5/month: 29 sign-ups; 15 cancellations; Total= 14
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And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
Farber's First Fundamental of Blogging:
If your idea of making an insightful point is to make fun of people's
names, or refer to them by rilly clever labels such as "The Big Me" or "The Shrub,"
chances are high that I'm not reading your blog. The same applies if you refer
to a group of people by disparaging terms such as "the Donks" or "the pals." (Note: I have to say I don't give that much of a damn any more.)
Farber's Second Fundamental of Blogging:
The more interested you are in scoring a "point" for a political "team," a "side," than in exploring the validity or value of an idea, the less interested I am in what you're saying.
(Note: Partially suspended for the Duration.)
Farber's Third Fundamental of Blogging:
If you see a link on another blog, and use it, credit the blog.
Some places I go:
[weblogs, sites, and columns]
People I've known and still miss include Isaac Asimov, rich brown, Charles Burbee, F. M. "Buzz" Busby, Terry Carr, A. Vincent Clarke, George Alec Effinger,
Bill & Sherry Fesselmeyer, George Flynn, John Milo "Mike" Ford. John Foyster, Jay Haldeman, Chuch Harris, Mike Hinge, Lee Hoffman, Terry Hughes, Damon Knight, Ross Pavlac, Bruce Pelz, Elmer Perdue, Tom Perry,
Larry Propp, Bill Rotsler, Art Saha, Bob Shaw, Martin Smith, Harry Stubbs, Bob Tucker, Reed Waller, Harry Warner, Jr., Jack Williamson, Walter A. Willis, Susan Wood, Kate Worley, and Roger Zelazny.
It's just a start.
And She of whom I must write someday.
You Like Me, You Really Like Me
...Darn: I saw that Gary had commented on this thread, and thought: oh. my. god. Perfect storm. Unstoppable cannonball, immovable object.
-- Hilzoy
Where would the blogosphere be without the Guardian? Guardian fish-barreling is now a venerable tradition. Yet even within this tradition, I don't believe there has ever been a more extensive and thorough essay than this one, from Gary Farber's fine blog. Gary appears to have examined every single thing that Guardian/Observer columnist Mary Ridell has ever written. He ties it all together, reaches inevitable conclusion. An archive can be a weapon.
-- Dr. Frank
Isn't Gary a cracking blogger, apropos of nothing in particular?
-- Alison Scott
I usually read you and Patrick several times a day, and I always get something from them. You've got great links, intellectually honest commentary, and a sense of humor. What's not to like?
-- Ted Barlow
...writer[s] I find myself checking out repeatedly when I'm in the mood to play follow-the-links. They're not all people I agree with all the time, or even most of the time, but I've found them all to be thoughtful writers, and that's the important thing, or should be.
-- Tom Tomorrow
Amygdala - So much stuff it reminds Unqualified Offerings that UO sometimes thinks of Gary Farber as "the liberal Instapundit." -- Jim Henley
I look at it almost every day. I can't follow all the links, but I read most of your pieces. The blog format really seems to suit you. It also suits me; I am not a news junkie, so having smart people like you ferret out the interesting stuff and leave it where I can find it is wonderful.
-- Lydia Nickerson
Gary is certainly a non-idiotarian 'liberal'...
-- Perry deHaviland
...the thoughtful and highly intelligent Gary Farber... My first reaction was that I definitely need to appease Gary Farber of Amygdala, one of the geniuses of our age.
-- Brad deLong
My friend Gary Farber at Amygdala is the sort of liberal for whom I happily give three cheers. [...] Damned incisive blogging....
-- Midwest Conservative Journal
If I ever start a paper, Clueless writes the foreign affairs column, Layne handles the city beat, Welch has the roving-reporter job, Tom Tomorrow runs the comic section (which carries Treacher, of course). MediaMinded runs the slots - that's the type of editor I want as the last line of defense. InstantMan runs the edit page - and you can forget about your Ivins and Wills and Friedmans and Teepens on the edit page - it's all Blair, VodkaP, C. Johnson, Aspara, Farber, Galt, and a dozen other worthies, with Justin 'I am smoking in such a provocative fashion' Raimondo tossed in for balance and comic relief.
Who wouldn't buy that paper? Who wouldn't want to read it? Who wouldn't climb over their mother to be in it?
-- James Lileks
Gary is a perceptive, intelligent, nice guy. Some of the stuff he comes up with is insightful, witty, and stimulating. And sometimes he manages to make me groan.
-- Charlie Stross
One of my issues with many poli-blogs is the dickhead tone so many bloggers affect to express their sense of righteous indignation. Gary Farber's thoughtful leftie takes on the world stand in sharp contrast with the usual rhetorical bullying. Plus, he likes "Pogo," which clearly attests to his unassaultable good taste.
-- oakhaus.com
Gary Farber is a principled liberal....
-- Bill Quick, The Daily Pundit
I read Amygdala...with regularity, as do all sensible websurfers.
-- Jim Henley, Unqualified Offerings
Okay, he is annoying, but he still posts a lot of good stuff.
-- Avedon Carol, The Sideshow
The only trouble with reading Amygdala is that it makes me feel like such a slacker. That Man Farber's a linking, posting, commenting machine, I tell you!
-- John Robinson, Sore Eyes
Jaysus. I saw him do something like this before, on a thread about Israel. It was pretty brutal. It's like watching one of those old WWF wrestlers grab an opponent's
face and grind away until the guy starts crying. I mean that in a nice & admiring way, you know.
-- Fontana Labs, Unfogged
We read you Gary Farber! We read you all the time! Its just that we are lazy with our blogroll. We are so very very lazy. We are always the last ones to the party but we always have snazzy bow ties.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber you are a genius of mad scientist proportions. I will bet there are like huge brains growin in jars all over your house.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber is the hardest working man in show blog business. He's like a young Gene Hackman blogging with his hair on fire, or something.
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
I bow before the shrillitudinousness of Gary Farber, who has been blogging like a fiend.
-- Ted Barlow, Crooked Timber
Gary Farber only has two blogging modes: not at all, and 20 billion interesting posts a day [...] someone on the interweb whose opinions I can trust....
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
Gary Farber! Jeez, the guy is practically a blogging legend, and I'm always surprised at the breadth of what he writes about.
-- PZ Meyers, Pharyngula
Gary Farber takes me to task, in a way befitting the gentleman he is.
-- Stephen Green, Vodkapundit
FOUNDATIONS AND EMPIRES: There's an unfortunate amount of truth to this. And I note with interest that David Brooks singles out the same New York Review of Books piece, "Occidentalism," by Avishai Margalit and Ian Buruma, that I cited as a must-read, as support.
While I agree with much in this essay, it's necessary to point out that Brooks entirely neglects to give consideration to the notion that there might be any good reasons for Europe to not "be imperially confident, to feel the forces of history blowing at one's back, to have heroic and even eschatological aspirations."
Reasons, say, such as having had empires, and having suffered through the misfortunes of them, and of their moral responsibilities and failures, and through the aftermaths. Reasons such as having lived through the slaughter and devastation of the 20th century, through World Wars One and Two, and the scything down of entire generations of manhood, which tempers all thought of war, no matter how called for. It's not just bourgeoisophobia, petty envy, and other sordid motivations such as those Brooks rightfully decries, that fertilizes the soil of Europe's intellectual notions today.
Nor does it seem to me that, as Brooks seems to think, in all things American ways must be correct, and European ways incorrect. Perhaps I'm mindlessly against efficiency uber alles, but is it so indivisibly wonderful that Americans have the shortest vacations and longest working hours of anyone on the planet? It does wonders for the GDP, but for the individual? Y'know, that person American ideals are supposed to be all about, rather than the collective?
Despite my lack of signing on with one hundred percent enthusiasm for every word, I must note that Brooks has produced an impressive, classic, my-goodness-when-will-he-pause-for-breath, rant. Not must-read, but worth reading.
FOG IN CHANNEL, EUROPE CUT OFF: Joan Smith of The Independent writes of the Falklands War:
Its real significance, I suspect, lies in the way a nasty Latin American junta unintentionally changed the fortunes of a deeply unpopular British prime minister. We got the Falklands back but we also got another eight years of Lady Thatcher, which doesn't strike me as anything to celebrate.
Another way to look at it is that a deeply unpopular British prime minister changed the fortunes of a nasty Latin American junta, responsible for the deaths of thousands of its oppressed citizens, which led to the rapid decline and disappearance of all South American dictatorships, ultimately freeing an entire continent and hundreds of millions of people from terrible regimes.
(Despite, one may add, the shilly-shallying of the US Reagan Administration epitomized by the temporizing of Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Alexander Haig, who never met an anti-communist dictator they didn't like; insert obligatory Sir John Nott reference here.)
It also stiffened the resolve of NATO and emphasized that it was not to be trifled with, helping to weaken the notion in the Soviet Union's leadership that they were breaking NATO and Western will and ability to resist Soviet power-plays.
So it's possible that just a bit more was in play than the sheep-herders of the Falkland islands, and Margaret Thatcher's popularity on a larger set of isles, if one wishes to consider a world faintly larger than domestic political concerns.
TWO VIEWS of rioting middle-class college students intoxicated by sports and alcohol: one unsympathetic here and one sympathetic here.
Alas, my own reactions line up with old journalism's Michelle Cottle against blogger Will. Will Wilkinson has many plaints, but my heart, I fear, is hard.
He says the Washington Post "fail to note how the police visibly incited the crowd." I realize I'm a stickler in this, but I think it's possible to avoid throwing trash cans, smashing windows, and counter-threatening the police, no matter how true this is (and his own account makes clear that little of the student behavior was "incited"). Will explains:
The PGCPD must give specialized courses in how to actively create a climate of opposition and rebellion, because they achieved this with brilliant efficiency. Now students we're just thrilled to have an opportunity make frat house martyrs of themselves. A group of guys stood about ten feet in front of the line, just stood there, back to the cops, saying Fuck You with their proximity. And after a short while, sure enough, the kids were painted with Terminator lasers and fired upon repeatedly, Pop Pop Pop. And they just stood there, enduring the sting and the gas. That's right, fuck you. The crowd roared in appreciation.
The PGCPD established themselves firmly as the enemy, and declared open season on the non-police. And the students, in their inebriated pride, felt it incumbent upon themselves to actively resist, and so began hurling bottles at the shields, tearing down police line ribbons and using them creatively for a bit of limbo in the intersection, all to show that you ain't gonna tell us what to do.
And so on. Bad police. Very mean. They fired pepper shots and "did their best to ensure that vandalism and agression did become the overall spirit."
Yes, well, somehow I'm a bit lacking in sympathy for the way somehow these delightfully exuberant students -- in their ever so important cause of flipping out over some sports event, which clearly is one of the moral causes of the age -- were hypnotically relieved of all personal responsibility as moral agents by the Laser Mind Rays of the police and Their Intimidating Horses, and forced to become drunken criminal assholes in response to The Man.
I've just become a stuffy pompous ass in my old age, it's clear.
Woo-hoo, I wish I could beat hell out a neighborhood, and get away with it, too. 'Cuz it ain't over, y'know, protesting Evil Globalizing Corporations, or Oppressive Israelis, or Amerika's Imperial Militarism, it's for a fun cause, like winning a basketball game! So that's okay, then. They were exhilarated.
30 points is in the 20 through 39 precent
TYPE C (HIT-CURIOUS). You do the weblog thing for yourself instead of for an audience, but you are aware that you do have an audience, small as it might be. You are often curious as to what other people find so interesting about your weblog. You check your weblog referrers every now and then just to satisfy your curiosity.
KELLY'S HEROS: Brad Leithauser looks at Pogo. They're discussing their blogs.
Most bloggers:
The story mentions Tom Tomorrow, by the way ("the sharpest strip currently going, Tom Tomorrow's This Modern World, seems the work of an unapologetic Sixties lefty").
BASICALLY CORRECT: Doing my part to help Jim Henley lose his bet that few will link, I'd say that this exegesis of Perry de Havilland is largely accurate, though I'd quibble a bit with a couple of smaller points.
My quibbles are that a) I don't agree that bigoted behavior towards Arabs was particularly driven by "collectivist strain of thought" unless Perry is using that in a more generalized way than I'm familiar with (and mayhaps he is) to refer to all bigoted behavior.
b) Israel certainly wasn't trying to make sure Arafat was made leader of the Palestinians; indeed, one of the stupidest strategic mistakes Israel made was during the Seventies and Eighties when they did all they could to build up religious militant opposition to Arafat by supporting, with money and aid, Hamas and like-minded groups. I'm not sure people who are johnny-come-lately to Middle East observing realize this, it seems so inconceivably wrong-headed now (and did then to anyone who wasn't obsessed with the idea that Arafat was the worst possibility).
And c) of course (and Natalie Solent missed this as well), a significant amount was done to tie Palestinians economically to Israel, and also to help many genuinely benefit from interaction with the Israeli economy, including as entrepeneurs, not just as down-trodden labor to be exploited. However, this had its own obvious drawbacks, and was therefore done both insufficiently, and to the detriment of the Israeli economy as well, given its collapse.
Beyond these essentially small points, I have no problems with, as far as it goes in its limited venue, de Havilland's analysis.
I'd only point out that he neglected to mention how self-destructive treating Israel's Arab population as second-class citizens has also been, and which is bearing more and more poisoned fruit. (No matter that, of course, Israel is the only state in the Middle East where Arabs freely elect their own representatives to the national parliament, and do have civil rights).
YUM!: Organic circuits made of carbon and hydrogen. They're being developed so that, for instance, they can be tagged onto food at the grocery, to analyze freshness, and report it and location via radio.
...such circuits are soluble and can be attached to organic substrates like plastic, paper or even cloth — materials that would never survive the high temperatures required to make circuits out of silicon.
Very cool: they're inherently printable. The only manufacturing necessary is the right inkjet printer.
Other potential applications for organic transistors include cheaper, faster blood tests, biometric sensors, anti-counterfeiting circuits printed onto currency, apparel that resists theft, smarter luggage tags and products that take advantage of the transistors' ability to superconduct energy at low temperatures and to drive lasers.
ARTIFICIAL SOCIETIES: Models of them, that is, nowadays computerized. A fascinating article on what we can learn with them, including how individual preferences can lead to surprising collective outcomes.
In other words, even in this extremely crude little world, knowing individuals' intent does not allow you to foresee the social outcome, and knowing the social outcome does not give you an accurate picture of individuals' intent.
Hey, just like our world!
More to the point, this has something to say about how societies reach tipping points.
SIMPLESME BOVE: The American Prospect also has the lowdown on who the hell Jose Bove is. Turns out he's a Bakunist anarcho-syndicalist who likes to be called a "farmer."
Arrested outside the compound by the Israeli Defense Force on April 2, Bove -- who gained international attention after destroying a McDonalds in the southern French town of Millau in 1999 -- was deported to Paris the next day. Bove has become, in recent years, a surprisingly ubiquitous international figure, turning up at Zapatista marches in Mexico and anti-trade conferences from Seattle to Brazil. And part of the reason for his ubiquity is that he is not a farmer-turned-activist at all.
Instead, he is a self-proclaimed activist-turned-farmer who has spent less and less time on his Millau farm in recent years and who routinely inserts himself into international controversies.
THAT DARNED LIBERAL NEWSPAPER: Brendan Nyhan (of SpinSanity) has the story (in an actual unabashed liberal publication) of how Washington Post reporter Susan Schmidt lost it and tried to get Clinton-supporter e-mailers complaining about her stories fired from their jobs.
How long until the Post gets a blog? (Let's not count Howard Kurtz.) Amygdala Washington Post Blog Countdown: Day 1.
Jewish students coming out of worship services have been pelted with eggs and subjected to epithets, Oleon said. Last week someone threw a cinder block through the front windows and wrote "F-- Jews" in black marker on the Jewish Hillel cultural center's recycling bins. Some Jewish students believe that Berkeley professors, even those who are Jewish, have unfairly come down hard on Israel in lectures.
But Palestinian students say they too are harassed on campus -- labeled as terrorists and as being anti-Semitic just for voicing their opposition to Israel. Some say Zionist students have tried to intimidate them by declaring their intentions to join the Israeli army after graduation.
MAILING LIST SUED for $15,000,000.00 because people on it complained about bad service from a company.
Read about it here. Moreover, people are being sued for trademark infringement for using the name of the company -- that's "Pets Warehouse," by the way -- in writing about the case on the web. Pets Warehouse. Pets Warehouse. Pets Warehouse. Pets Warehouse. Pets Warehouse. Pets Warehouse. Who knows how many people might mention this, and have to be sued?
Have I mentioned that I am Spartacus? And I wouldn't buy from Pets Warehouse.
Three people confessed to trying to throw Molotov cocktails at a synagogue in southern France and five suspects were detained in a similar attack outside Paris, officials said Friday.
Meanwhile, a suspected homemade bomb was found at a Jewish cemetery in the eastern city of Strasbourg that was the target of an arson attempt earlier in the week, police said.
Bomb experts were called to the Strasbourg-Cronenbourg cemetery after receiving reports Friday that a fire extinguisher filled with powder was found on the grounds, police said. It was safely removed.
Arsonists set fire to a prayer pavilion at the same cemetery Tuesday, causing its roof to collapse. It was just one of many attacks on Jewish targets in recent days that has coincided with heightened tensions in the Middle East.
Five people were detained after two Molotov cocktails were thrown at a synagogue in the Paris suburb of Kremlin-Bicetre overnight Wednesday. The devices failed to hit their apparent target and crashed onto a nearby sidewalk without causing damage, officials from the Val de Marne region said.
The identities of the five detainees were not released.
Police said three people confessed to trying to throw Molotov cocktails at a synagogue in the southern city of Montpellier early Thursday. They appeared before prosecutors Friday and were placed under investigation -- a step short of being charged -- for arson-related charges.
The gasoline bombs caused serious damage to the building that adjoins the synagogue, which authorities believe was the intended target.
[...]
[The attack] embarrassed the government, which has tried to play down accusations that anti-Semitism is a growing problem in the country, which has a large Muslim population.
TREASON: There seems to be considerable confusion afoot as to what "treason" is. Treason consists of committing acts of war or espionage against your country. It is one of the most serious charges possible. In many countries it is the only remaining crime punishable by death. It is not to be thrown about lightly. To call for it is to say that the person found guilty of it is worthy of the death penalty. To call for someone's death necessitates the deepest moral consideration.
And yes, Gary, I do accuse Adam Shapiro of being a traitor. By trying to save Arafat’s life, he adds legitimacy to Arafat who is both directly behind a great deal of terror attacks against other Jews via his Tanzim and Al-Aqsa Brigades and indirectly by turning a blind eye or actively calling for more martyrs. He did indeed verbally defend Arafat in a CNN interview conducted by a newswoman who was so enamored with him, that had she been able to felate him, I have no doubt she would have. Shapiro indeed chose sides, and he chose the enemy of the Jewish people. Nevertheless, I will stand with you and condemn those schmucks who have threatened his family back in New York. It is uncalled-for and wrong.
Y'know, I don't care if Adam Shapiro leaped into Arafat's lap, deep-throated him, and was adopted as Yasser's grandchild.
If Shapiro did not take up arms against Israel, or smuggle arms to Israel, or deliver miltary secrets to the Palestinian Authority, it simply doesn't matter what he says. Whatever he says, it's not treason. It's free speech.
That's a simple concept, Geoff, but we're back to it again. Free speech. That includes stuff that upsets you.
Your repeated opinion that people should be killed because of their speech offends me. Shall I now, too, call you a "traitor" to the US Consitution, and call for your death? Or shall I put it down as ill-considered thought, made in the heat of understandable passion, not treason, just as anything Adam Shapiro says must be so considered, no matter how it upsets you or me or anyone else?
Avram Grumer responds here. Various comments, including about "self-hating Jews," including from me, are made here and here.
Addendum: Geoff Meltzner's responded and I'll leave him with the last word.
PAGING TOM FRIEDMAN who keeps calling, of late, for US and NATO peacekeepers in the West Bank. I'm dubious they'd wind up being treated any differently by Palestinians than Israeli troops, but in any case, should this come about, here's one reported plan.
(In other stunning news, here's a headline that takes everyone by surprise: Israel's tourism suffers. Really?, he gasped in astonishment.)
PERES SHOULD TELL THEM WHERE TO SHOVE THEIR PRIZE: I'd say it's unbelievable, but it's too believable:
Oslo Bishop Gunnar Stalsett, a committee member for the past eight years, describes as "absurd" what he sees as the involvement of a Nobel laureate in human rights abuses.
He's talking about Arafat, right? Of course not.
Members of the Norwegian committee that awards the annual Nobel Peace Prize have launched an unprecedented verbal assault on Israeli Foreign Minister and Nobel peace laureate Shimon Peres. Mr Peres accepted the peace prize jointly with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israel's late prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, in 1994.
In an interview with a Norwegian newspaper, committee members said they regretted that Mr Peres' prize could not be recalled because, as a member of the Israeli cabinet, he had not acted to prevent Israel's re-occupation of Palestinian territory.
One member said Mr Peres had not lived up to the ideals he expressed when he accepted the prize.
"What is happening today in Palestine is grotesque and unbelievable," said Hanna Kvanmo.
Yes, it is, as is what's happening in Norway and Europe.
"Yes, I wish it was possible that we could recall the prize" said Nobel committee member Hanna Kvanmo. [...] Other committee members argue that the Israeli government's actions in general and Mr Peres' involvement in particular are threatening to bring the prize into disrepute.
There is not a single question voiced about that nice Mr. Arafat.
Committee chairman Geir Lundestad voiced the concern of several members that if Mr Arafat were to be killed as a result of Israeli actions, one Nobel laureate might in effect be said to have killed the other.
BLOG BADMINTON: Avram Grumer has some thoughts regarding what Eve Tushnet said about the social organization component aspect of political identity and ideology, and my response.
I realize that I'm more interested in sorting out which ideas I think are right and wrong and which I support and oppose than I am in Picking A Political Identity.
Avram also provides, in response to Eve, his test for "You may not be a conservative anymore if... "
FREE-MARKET COMPETITION: Protesting that the Catholic Church gets too much credit for an ancient and vigorous history of anti-semitism, Scottish Episcopalians entered the fray, declaring that they could be just as antisemitic as any Papists:
A Scottish clergyman said today that a church mural showing a crucified Jesus flanked by both Roman soldiers and modern-day Israeli troops was not anti-Semitic, but designed to make his congregation think about current conflicts.
The Rev. John Armes said the painting, which was unveiled last week as part of the church's Easter celebrations and removed today, "unashamedly addresses the role of the Israeli government" in the Middle East conflict.
[...]
The 2.7-meter square painting showed Jesus lying dead in his mother's arms with the Roman soldiers on one side and Israeli troops on the other.
[...]
"Our mural is a challenge not to the Jewish people but to the Israeli state," he said.
And, I suppose, to the Arabs and Christians who live there, who murdered Jesus. Or maybe not. The earlier story is here; the original report in The Scotsman is here:
Jesus is flanked by Roman soldiers on one side and Israeli troops on the other. His thorn of crowns is made of barbed wire and his cross has been broken in the conflict.
John McLuckie, St John’s associate rector , said the painting was aimed at getting the public to think about the victims of violence. "It’s the traditional image of dead Jesus in the arms of his mother but it is meant to symbolise modern victims," he said.
"It’s meant to make people think about the violence that is going on and to consider what lies behind the violence coming from both sides.
"It’s about getting people to think about the occupation of Palestinian territory. In common with other church leaders , we think Israel ought to abide by the UN resolution and let Palestine have their territory, that occupation should end.
"The victim is meant to represent all victims of violence."
I'm not holding my breath waiting for a mural showing people's body parts, blood, and internal organs, strewn across the floor of a disco, a pizza parlor, a cafe, as someone with a belt explodes. But this mural does, after all, cover "both sides." You can see that in the picture, right?
Here's today's followup. Those nice Scottish people were going to march to the US consulate to "to protest at their continued backing for Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people," but police wouldn't allow the protest there, so the March from the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign will be held on another street. No word in the paper when the march from the Israeli Terror Bombing Victim Solidarity Campaign will be held. Oh, there is no Israeli Solidarity Campaign. Darn, not even because both Scots and Jews are so cheap. (Original tip via Bill Quick and Midwest C
They're discussing their blogs. 
And, I suppose, to the Arabs and Christians who live there, who murdered Jesus. Or maybe not. The earlier story is 