Monthly Archives: March 2010

This was carried in Ha’aretz yesterday. Israeli peace group, Peace Now, translates an interview in Israel’s Yedioth Aranoth with Moshe Ya’along, Israeli Vice PM and Minister for Strategic Affairs:

Gestures, statements, negotiations—nothing will come of it in the end. That is the bottom line as far as Vice Prime Minister and Minister for Strategic Affairs Moshe (Bogi) Yaalon is concerned. The former Mapainik, who has become a right-wing marker in the government, looks at the lame efforts to resume the negotiations with the Palestinians and at the gestures made by Prime Minister Netanyahu—from the announcement of the two-state solution to the decision to freeze construction in the settlements—and suggests that we not become confused. It is all maneuvers. “And I say so out of knowledge,” Bogi says. “Nobody in the forum of seven thinks that we can reach an agreement with the Palestinians.”

Q. So why all these games of make-believe negotiations? It’s possible to announce that we will not reach an agreement, and that is all.

“Because in the political establishment there are pressures. Peace Now from within and other elements from without. So you have to maneuver. But what I’m saying now has to be given over to the Americans, and I hope that they will understand.
“Some of what we have to do is maneuver with the American administration and the European establishment, which are also nourished by Israeli elements, which create the illusion that an agreement can be reached. If the leader of the opposition gets up on stage and says that she is in favor of peace, unlike the prime minister who is against peace, then honestly. Come off it.”

Take a few moments and listen to this episode of Britain’s Hold Your Plums/

I’ll just link this story and let you read it. This finding is going to gain an enormous amount of interest among anthropologists because it really does shake up the prior model we had in place to account for existing evidence on homonid migrations out of Africa. This really is an earth-shaker.
Denisova hominid

I Spy

This wonderful TV show not only brought Bill Cosby to a national audience, it was a significant cultural landmark towards racial equality. My family loved “I Spy”. Hat tip to Culp. I’m sure many actors at that time would have refused to co-star with an African American.

“In his 24 years as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, from around the world, all cases of grave sexual offences by clerics had to be reported, under strictest secrecy (”secretum pontificum”), to his curial office, which was exclusively responsible for dealing with them. Ratzinger himself, in a letter on “grave sexual crimes” addressed to all the bishops under the date of 18 May, 2001, warned the bishops, under threat of ecclesiastical punishment, to observe “papal secrecy” in such cases.”

here

Matt Yglesias at Think Progress notes a wonderful Niebuhr quote:

Since inequalities of privilege are greater than could possibly be defended rationally, the intelligence of privileged groups is usually applied to the task of inventing specious proofs for the theory that universal values spring from, and that general interests are served by, the special privileges which they hold.

Tall Stories Tiny Lies

Chris Hitchens sets to a rewrite of the Commandments

Ross Douthat on religious experience gone Burger King

Edge People by Tony Judt

Martha Nussbaum and the “politics of disgust”

The right kind of bigotry

Okavango Delta

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/2/12/1265994324005/Night-Blooming-Water-Lili-012.jpg

You don’t want to miss this…

Sometimes, I really love humans.  And their animal buddies.

(h/t Balloon Juice)