July 2011

How Greenwald Argues

July 30, 2011

We’ve had an interesting and now long-running thread of comments going from Rob H.’s guest post the other day, “Glenn Greenwald’s False Accusation Against The New York Times.” I’ve offered my latest contribution in the comments, the full length of which you can reach via link at the end of this post. I thought I would highlight [...]

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The Tea Party Bolsheviks & the National Debt

July 28, 2011

An important point to remember about Bolshevism is that it was not an ideology, but a method. The ideology was Marxism. Adjusted to circumstance and extended as Leninism, it was Marxist-Leninism. Bolshevism was about how they pursued the revolution and how they ruled after it. The name itself, which means “majority,” contrasted with the minority [...]

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Glenn Greenwald’s False Accusation Against The New York Times

July 26, 2011

(The following is Guest Post by Robert H., cross-posted from OpenSalon.) In the wake of the deadly attacks in Norway on Friday, Glenn Greenwald posted this controversial column. It mainly spoke to both the media’s early reporting of a Jihadi claim of involvement, and the ongoing journalistic portrayal of Norway as a peaceful nation when [...]

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Time to Renounce the Doctrine of Discovery

July 25, 2011

Not much reason amid all the attention on reaching a debt deal that most people, including in the media, would have paid any attention to a meeting of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. Not much reason ever, by normal lights. Still, the happy advent of Gay marriage in New York managed to catch [...]

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CineFile – Chinatown

July 24, 2011

Some great films enter the culture, above and beyond their artistry, by striking emblematic gold. In an image, a scene, a line, they make an essential statement that the audience loves both for its insight and its expression. Roman Polanski‘s Chinatown has at least two of those emblematic expressions. One is found in Faye Dunaway‘s Evelyn [...]

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How We Lived on It (38) – A Venn Diagram of “Things That Are Bad” in the World and the Few That Are Not

July 23, 2011

I could not have suspected when I began this series that one day a single post would so approach universal completeness as nearly to obviate the need for going on. But it was in the space between nearly and not, I believe, that the Big Bang occurred, so, in the nearly words of Mr. Beckett, [...]

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Islamist Terrorism: The British Connection

July 20, 2011

The Henry Jackson Society, the British-based think tank, is dedicated to “fostering a strong British and European commitment towards freedom, liberty, constitutional democracy, human rights, governmental and institutional reform and a robust foreign, security and defence policy and transatlantic alliance.” Its recent report, Islamist Terrorism: The British Connection , produced some striking findings and statistics. [...]

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The State Solution: Yes, for South Sudan; No, for Israel

July 19, 2011

Hedar Sela has an incisive piece at The Propagandist that sharply zeroes in on the true nature of the so-called “one-state solution.” (H/T CiFWatch). Readers of political commentary on the Middle East will frequently see reference to the ‘one-state solution’ in relation to the Arab-Israeli conflict. What perhaps is often not sufficiently clear is what [...]

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The Culture of Murdoch and a Criminal Enterprise

July 18, 2011

Sometimes the commodity is a valuable mineral, like gold or diamond. The former is considered so valuable as to require heighted security and protection from criminal acquisition, in the U.S., at Fort Knox. The latter, the criminal pursuit of which is famously high in style and low and deadly, may even receive the epithet “blood,” [...]

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Eating Poetry (XXVII) – “I Am Not Yours”

July 16, 2011

Harriet Monroe wrote, “She was as delicate as a lily, but under the white-petaled perfume one felt in her presence an impassioned intensity of feeling which her brief lyrics were then beginning to express.” Related articles Eating Poetry (XXV) – Some of the Words Are Theirs (sadredearth.com) HD in London: When Imagism arrived (guardian.co.uk) Jacket [...]

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From the Annals of Indigenous Resistance: “Terrorism”

July 13, 2011

How, you were wondering, is the field of power like a four-walled racquetball court? Sometimes the strikes are straight on, at the front wall or (oops, sorry) at your opponent’s back. Sometimes – often, in fact – there is the ricochet, off the side wall, angled then low on the back, then low to the [...]

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Institutional Antisemitism

July 12, 2011

For Americans unfamiliar with it, Britain’s University College Union (UCU) might be thought of as a higher ed American Federation of Teachers (AFT) or National Education Association (NEA) combined with the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). It is a union and a professional association. It has a membership of 130,000. After years of obsessive political attention [...]

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Philip Roth: Fictio cedit veritati

July 7, 2011

“Fiction yields to truth.” This is a dictum of ancient Roman law, specific in its application to Roman law, yet it yields a sentiment appropriate to the discussion. This is what Phillip Roth seems to have conveyed in his recent interview with Financial Times arts editor Jan Dalley that has set the literary world abuzz. [...]

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Is this the Arab Spring? “The Holocaust is a lie”

July 6, 2011

According to a Washington Times interview, of which is there is corroborating audio: A leader of Egypt’s top secular party says the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were “made in the USA,” the Holocaust is “a lie” and Anne Frank’s memoir is “a fake” — comments sure to roil the post-revolution political debate in the [...]

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Reasoning Gone Off the Rails: Jerusalem’s Light Rail Project

July 6, 2011

It is, so far, impossible to run out of examples of how intellectually corrupt much contemporary thinking is on the subject of Israel-Palestine. Today, Adam Levick at CiFWatch offers a mundane municipal illustration by way of Jerusalem’s soon to be operational (in its first phase) Light Rail line. Levick tells us that the first line will [...]

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A Portrait of the Artist in Uncertainty

July 5, 2011

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Independence Day #235

July 4, 2011

The American Civil War, known commonly by that name, but by many others, too, all depending on one’s point of view, has, in fact, no official name. The Fourth of July, known commonly by that name, does have an official name, and it isn’t that. It is Independence Day. All depending on one’s point of view, we [...]

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A Profile of Contemporary Antisemitism

July 1, 2011

(The following is a guest post of an interview by Daniel Vahab of Adam Levick, from Daniel’s latest newsletter. Daniel is “a freelance writer for various newspapers, with a particular niche in Jewish publications.  His work has appeared in the Jewish Forward, the Jewish Post, the Jewish Journal, the Jewish State, as well as the [...]

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