This page has all the info you’ll need on contacting the FCC. Or you could go to mediareform.net instead, and used their prepared materials and links to contact the FCC. Do it now, today. Or tomorrow. Do it by Monday morning at the very latest. But call them, or email them, or FAX them.

Do it. It takes two minutes. Do it.

What are you calling them about? Well, to quote from mediareform.net’s materials:

CNN reports that the FCC’s email and voice mail systems have been flooded with messages - more than they can handle. Let’s not relent now. Keep it up!

For more info on this issue, check out mediareform.net’s pages. Also, Jimm of the blog “Project for a New Century of Freedom” has been very on top of this issue, so check out his posts.

But most of all - make a call, write an email, send a FAX. Do it now, please. Today.

Who knows? Maybe it’ll make a diff. Can’t hurt to try, I figure.

Yay! Groupthink Central is back!
I knew I was right to leave GC on the blogroll… Yuval has a good post up on Sharon’s surprising use of the “O” word (”To keep 3.5 million people under occupation is bad for us and them”) and subsequent backtracking in the face of horrified Likkudniks. Alas, the permalink is bloggered, so just go to GC and look for May 27th’s entry.

Additions to the Blogroll
Two new (well, new to me, anyhow) lefty blogs: Magpie and Skeptical Notion. And also a new-to-me right-wing blog, Assume the Position. Please go check ‘em out.

Canada: It ain’t the culture, it’s the institutions
Via Magpie comes this interesting article, arguing persuasively that Canada is not more liberal than the US because the culture is more liberal, but because of how our respective governing institutions are set up.

Sociobiology as cocktail-party humor
David Chess applies sociobiological insights to modern business meetings. He’s not serious (I don’t think he is, anyhow), but his argument stands up as well as many “legitimate” sociobiological arguments do.

Suddenly, examining root causes is okay
Skeptical Notion points out that Paul Wolfowitz has been saying that a prime reason to invade Iraq was to move US troops out of Saudi Arabia, in order to reduce mid-east resentment of the US. Doesn’t that sound kinda… familiar?

Man discovers he’s been dead for over half a century
No, really - go read the story on Hot Buttered Death. And while you’re there, scroll down to the strangest search request of all time.

The Coming Palestization of Iraq
If you read only one blog post this weekend, read this one. Back in Iraq 2.0, a blog written by an American reporter who was in Iraq during the war, argues that “an intifada is brewing in Iraq, and American troops are about to stop being liberators and will be forced to embrace their inner occupiers.” Chis’ post covers a lot of topics (it’s pretty much your best one-stop shopping for the current Iraqi situation), and shows why it’s way too early to stop worrying about Iraq.

So what was that Private Lynch issue about?
Spinsanity has a good post of “myths, misconceptions, and unanswered questions about the war in Iraq.” What I found especially valuable was their coverage of the “saving Private Lynch” scandal, which even-handedly sums the issue up for those of us who haven’t been following it.

Second-Guessing Rehnquist and O’Connor
Like most feminists, I was delighted and surprised by the Supreme Court’s decision in Nevada v. Hibbs. After a long string of “pro-federalism” decisions, which limited Congress’ ability to impose civil rights protections on the states, the Supreme Court unexpectedly ruled that state employees could sue states for violating the federal Family & Medical Leave Act (FMLA).

It’s no shock that the four (relatively) liberal justices voted the way they did; but why did O’Connor and Rehnquist (!) join them? Ignatz suggests, persuasively, that Rehnquist saw that federalism wasn’t going to win in this case, and so joined the majority in order to be able to control and limit the scope of the decision. Jack Balkin brings up that theory, but also suggests several other possibilities; I find his alternate arguments more plausible for O’Connor than for Rehnquist.

Welcome to GIANTmicrobes!
“We make stuffed animals that look like tiny microbes—only a million times actual size! Now available: The Common Cold, The Flu, Sore Throat, and Stomach Ache.” As Scrubbles says, “cute.”

Father’s Rights, Trollish Wrongs
Frank at I Protest has found himself embroiled in a debate with an “angry white male father’s rights” type - regarding child abuse statistics, mostly - and is more than holding his own. Trish Wilson weighs in, as well. Nice going, folks.

Mapmaker, Mapmaker, make me a map
Ariga presents a contemporary rewrite of “Matchmaker” from Fiddler on the Roof. No permalinks, so look for the May 27th entry. Here’s a sample verse:

And the number-one minority in America is…
A really terrific Village Voice article by Ta-Nehisis Coates on the odd demographic fact that there are now more Latinos in the US than Blacks. Link via Prometheus 6, whose comments are also well-worth reading.

$44 Trillion dollars ain’t all it’s cracked up to be
A lot of liberals have been using the “$44 trillion” dollar statement as a club for beating Bush around the head this week. However, Maxspeak points out that there’s less in that $44 trillion than you might expect.

The “NOW Action Center” sent me an email, which included this item regarding the “partial birth abortion ban”:

I’ve blogged about the partial-birth abortion ban several times before. As I’ve argued in the past, this is a deeply dishonest bill; Republicans have used the ambiguity of the term “partial-birth” to create a bill that could be used to ban many forms of late-term abortion, rather than just the single procedure its proponents claim to be banning.

But NOW’s email goes overboard; as awful as this bill is, it won’t ban most abortion procedures, and it probably won’t ban any first-trimester abortions at all. This bill is bad enough without NOW being more alarmist than necessary (not to mention eroding its own credibility).

Ironically, the letter their webpage provides to send to Congresscritters comes much closer to the truth: “This harmful legislation threatens the health of countless women and will deny many women access to safe and common methods of abortion that are performed after the 12th week of pregnancy. Women need your support in defending their basic human right to safe and appropriate medical care.” Although I’m annoyed at NOW for their inaccuracy, I still used their page to send an email, and I hope most Alas readers will do the same.

300 High School Seniors Refuse to Join IDF

Have you heard about the Shministim? In Israel, typical teenagers serve a while in the Israeli Defense Force after high school (there are some exemptions available). But recently some teens are refusing to serve, because they beleive that serving in the IDF supports an immoral occupation.

Seeking to make an example, the IDF is court-martialing six of the high-school conscientious objectors (five who are refusing to serve because they object to the occupation, and one who is refusing to serve because he’s a pacifist). As always, Aron’s Israel Peace Blog has the info: a summary article, “The Saga of the Court Martials“; an interview with Haggai Matar, a co-founder of Shministim and one of the six boys on trial; and an interview with Haggai’s mother Anat Matar, a philosophy lecturer at Tel Aviv University. I liked this quote from Ms. Matar:

Conscientious objectors have always been my heroes; even as a kid, I read The Hobbit and thought that Bilbo’s refusal to fight at the end was the coolest thing I’d ever read. I hope the Israeli COs win their case.

If you’re interested in more information about the Shministim or about Israeli refuseniks in general, check out the Refuser Solidarity Network’s website.

One IDF Policy for Girls, Another for Boys

One fascinating point the “Saga of the court martials” brings up: a genuine case of anti-male sexism. The Israeli Defense Force has an official policy of not granting conscientious objector status to folks who oppose the occupation: this is the “pacifists yes, political refusers no” doctrine.

(In fact, whatever the official policy, the IDF in practice doesn’t grant CO status. “The army’s Conscience Committee, in theory charged with exempting CO’s, was in practice a dead-end, turning down virtually everybody who applied.”)

But, as the defense pointed out in court, the IDF does grant CO status for “political refusers” - if the political refuser happens to be female. In effect, male applicants for CO status are being discriminated against. The court has not yet ruled on this question.

Likud leader accuses IDF of violating human rights

Interesting article in the Guardian: a Likud leader has accused the IDF leadership of looking the other way while the IDF abuses the human rights of Palestinians. The accusations are nothing new, but the source is interesting.

Hopefully Mr. Eitan’s charges won’t be so easily dismissed.

Finding Love in the International Solidarity Movement

This cute story (again from the Guardian) describes how Adam Shapiro (nicknamed “the Jewish Taliban” by some disgusting people) and Huwaida Arraf (founder of the International Solidarity Movement) met, fell in love and married. Both of them were born in the US, and both of them have spent their lives fighting the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

As well as telling the story of their romance and marriage (which is pretty amusing - Arraf almost missed her own wedding because she was performing a hunger strike in an Israeli jail), the article gives an interesting picture of the life of a couple of very dedicated Americans opposed to the occupation.

An interesting cultural point from the article: Arraf’s father (a devout Catholic who at first didn’t approve of the marraige) apparently had difficulty understanding that Shapiro was Jewish but not Israeli. This is something I’ve read about elsewhere - many Palestinians learn to use the word “Jew” and “Israeli” interchangeably, referring not to religion but to Israeli citizenship.

Inspired, I suspect, by the discussion of this post at Calpundit, IdahoEv reminds liberals leaping on the WMD story to keep their eyes on the prize:

I think IdahoEv is right. If we allow the issue to become “can we locate any WMDs at all?,” then we create an opening for warmongers to put forward some genuinely pathetic counterarguments - such as Tony Blair’s rejoiner that “We have already found two trailers that both our and the American security services believe were used for the manufacture of chemical and biological weapons.”

(Wow, two whole trailers? Well, then, I guess the entire American Way of Life - heck, the whole Free World - was endangered. Good thing we countered that threat - why, with two trailers, Saddam was only moments away from marching across Europe.)

The issue isn’t if Saddam had WMDs. The issue is if Bush and Blair & co. deliberately misled us about what their intelligence agencies said, pretending to the world that evidence that was at best murky and ambiguous was actually clear and convincing. (Along those lines, by the way, check out this article in today’s Guardian - leaked transcripts show that Jack Straw and Colin Powell had severe doubts about the evidence days before Powell made his “most powerful and authoritative case” to the UN).

But even putting it this way is missing, I think, the most important issue. The real question here is democracy. Did Bush, Blair & company intentionally deceive the legislature and the public about Saddam’s WMDs in order to win legislative votes, and public support, that they could not have won with the truth?

If they did, that’s an assault on democracy. They denied the elected representatives (and some unelected, in Britain’s case) the information they needed to make a decision. In Bush’s case, his lies were a loophole in the Constitution; the Constitution says that the legislature needs to approve of wars, but by lying to Congress Bush in effect dodged that requirement.

As British MP Brian Donohoe said, “The sole reason I backed the government amendment was because we were given very clear indications there were weapons of mass destruction and that these could be used against neighbouring countries. As far as I’m concerned, that was the only legitimate reason for going to war.” There’s every reason to doubt that Bush and Blair could have gotten favorable votes from their legislatures if they had been honest about how little evidence there was that Saddam presented a real threat.

To be meaningful, democracy requires an informed public (and an informed legislature). When Blair and Bush lie about WMDs before essential votes, they are displaying their contempt for democracy itself. A vote won with lies is as illegitmate as a vote won with extortion, or with bribes. That, I think, is the central issue of the missing WMDs.

Ex-Labour minister Tony Benn spoke to the heart of the matter: “I believe the Prime Minister lied to us and lied to us and lied to us. The whole war was built upon falsehood and I think the long-term damage will be to democracy in Britain. If you can’t believe what you are told by ministers, the whole democratic process is put at risk. You can’t be allowed to get away with telling lies for political purposes.”

And there’s a secondary issue - supporting our troops. By sending troops to Iraq, Bush risked their lives. If he risked American soldiers’ lives to counter a threat he had reason to believe had been exaggerated or overstated, that’s morally disgusting. It shows a contempt for soldiers’ lives that no decent person – let alone a US president - should hold.

Unfortunately, neither the US press or the Democrats seem able or willing to put any real pressure on Bush. But at least the fire’s been lit under Blair.

Via Atrios, I read this Katha Pollit commentary on the Jayson Blair story. Pollitt makes the usual points, but in addition writes:

Pollitt also points out that the mea culpas currently on display at the Times lack perspective:

Click here for the whole article.

You’ve been scammed, now pay AT&T $20,000
This is pretty infuriating… It’s a news story about a scam some folks use to illegally charge calls to someone with a voicemail address. They guess the voicemail passcode, replace the regular message with a voice saying “Hello? Yes… yes… yes…,” and then ask the operator to charge overseas calls to that number.

What’s horrible is that even though AT&T acknowleges that it’s a scam, and the customer never actually authorized the charges, AT&T is still insisting that the bill be paid. Why? Because the customer should have picked a less obvious passcode. Of course, by the same token, some simple security measures on AT&T’s part could have prevented the scam in the first place. Link via Calblog.

Barbra Striesland is Stupid
Well, that pretty much says it all, but you can visit Calpundit for the details.

Shoplifting, theft and race and class privilege
Really excellent post on Silver Rights - in part inspired by a post about shoplifting I wrote a few weeks ago - on how race and class privilege are involved in petty theft.

Regarding Jeff Hauser’s moral dilemma, I just can’t imagine turning in a shoplifter in any circumstances. Especially if they looked poor. (Well, maybe if the shoplifter was someone I really disliked - like, if I saw John Ashcroft shoplifting, I’d narc on him in a second.)

A Democratic Vision for the Economy
Terminus has some good thoughts on economic vision for the Democrats, both for the short- and long-term.

Free Speech: Not in Bush’s America!
Counterspin has the story of a man who was arrested - and is now being prosecuted by the Federal Goverment - solely for holding up an anti-Bush sign in a public spot near a Bush speech. It’s pretty disgusting stuff. Barney Frank has written a letter to Ashcroft asking that the charges be dropped - please call your congresscritters and ask them to add their names to Frank’s letter.

What they’ve said about WMDs
I’ve seen a dozen blogs link to this, and it deserves every link it gets: Whiskey Bar has very usefully compilied quotes from various notables about how certain they are that we’ll find WMDs in Iraq.

Maybe the Clinton economy wasn’t so great
Interesting post on Wampum about that oft-asked question - how did Al Gore lose the election when the Clinton/Gore economy was so strong? As the article Wampum quotes points out, “Voters do not live in the macro economy.” Although GDP looked good in 200, in terms of real disposable income - that is, how much money voters have to spend - the economy in 2000 just was actually a bit sub-average. (The article doesn’t say, but I suspect this reflects extremely top-loaded economic growth in the 90s - rich folks had more money, but average voters didn’t).

So you’re a French kid who likes Star Wars and hangs out in your school’s A/V center. Naturally, you record yourself swinging around a broomstick like it was Darth Maul’s double-headed lightsaber, right?

I can relate to that.

Unfortunately, you’re also incredibly absent-minded, so you leave the videotape lying around, where just anyone can get see it. Such as other kids who don’t like you much.

I can relate to that.

Then those other kids decide to post it on the internet, and over a million people download you spinning around attacking thin air with your broomstick while making special effect noises with your mouth.

I’m so thankful I grew up before that was possible.

It’s not all bad, though. Some other folks took the video and remade it with cool sound and visual effects - theres a Star Wars version (my favorite) and also a Matrix version. It’s actually kinda of charming.

There’s even a happy ending to this: some webloggers have done some fundraising and have bought the kid an Ipod, so it’s not an entirely negative experience for him. Some other swag has been donated, including - get this - a replica lightsaber autographed by the actor who played Darth Maul.

The above-linked blog also contains a news story indicating that the kid’s family is considering a law suit - too bad, I hope they don’t go through with it - and an interview with the kid himself. All via Views from the Outside.

From CNN.com -

Yay scouts!

UPDATE: Oh, well, it didn’t last. See comment #5 below, and also this more recent post.

If you’re going to do something criminal, the first step is to make sure there are no witnesses. The Israeli government has been cracking down on human rights workers and monitors - and not just out-of-the-mainstream groups like the International Solidarity Movement.

According to Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Silvan Shalom, “most human rights offices in the West Bank and Gaza strip provide shelter for Palestinian terrorists.” Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other groups have issued a joint statement objecting to this accusation - and to the increased restrictions on their workers.

Note that what’s being talked about here is the right of these folks to do their work in the occupied territories - but how, exactly, does Israel have the right to say who can or cannot observe the situation in the West Bank and Gaza?

In practice, Israel has that right because Israel rules the West Bank and Gaza. But at the same time, each time Israel claims to be a democracy, it’s implicitly denying that Israel rules the West Bank and Gaza - because the folks who live there (other than the settlers) sure aren’t given a vote in Israeli elections. The occupation has gone on for decades; it’s time for Israel to either admit that they’re ruling the people there, and offer them full citizenship and a vote; or, failing that, for Israel to realize they have no moral right to keep out international human rights observers that the Palestinians clearly would prefer be allowed in.

I just added Beatniksalad! (”A weblog by Ryan in Manchester”) to my blogroll. I discovered Beatniksalad! because he just blogrolled me, but despite appearances I don’t do reciprocal links. Alas’ blogroll is just a list of blogs I like enough to want to check back on semi-regularly, whether they link to me or not (at least one blogger on the list has actively gone to other people’s websites to ask them not to link to me!). Beatniksalad! - due to Ryan’s sense of humor, his links to stories I haven’t seen elsewhere, his lefty politics (slightly left of me, which is pretty rare in blogtopia), and his charming habit of filling up the sidebar with crap that amuses him - is a blog I’ll want to return to regularly.

I’ve also added the Daily Kos (which I think of as the king of the “smoke-filled back room blogs”) to the blogroll. A link from me will make approximately the same difference to Kos’ overall traffic as bringing a paper bag full of lying shit to a Bush family reunion. But Kos is essential reading, and that’ll be more and more true as the 2004 election nears.

Oh, and I’ve added Allison Kaplan Sommer’s pro-occupation blog An Unsealed Room, as well. Since Allison (who is Israeli) pretty much defends Israel’s occupation, she and I disagree a lot. This has given me the opportunity to be impressed with Allison’s ability to disagree in civil terms. I try to make a habit of “reading the opposition,” and Allison’s innate decency and good writing skills keep that from being a chore.

The link to An Unsealed Room brings up some issues of terminology. First, Allison considers herself a leftist (or at least a liberal), but on the only issue we’ve discussed she’s far to the right of me. Since I can’t quite see her as a blog of a feather, but she probably wouldn’t like being classified as a right-winger, I’ve stuck her in “unpigeonholable.”

Second, what do I mean by calling her “pro-occupation”? Well, I’ve decided to start framing the Israel/Palestine issue that way - those who think the occupation is justified are “pro-occupation,” even if (like Allison) they don’t like the occupation and regret the human costs; those who don’t think the occupation is justified are “anti-occupation.” I’m using this terminology because I refuse to define the issue in terms of being “pro-Israel” or “anti-Israel,” since I’m “pro-Israel” in the larger sense of supporting Israel’s right to exist and hoping it prospers. Being a peacenik is not being anti-Israel, dammit!

Democracy Now! reports on “Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death,” a documentary film that has received significant screenings in Europe, but which has been ignored by the US press. According to Democracy Now:

In Europe, this is old news; UK papers were talking about this back in September. There not much doubt that the massacre occurred. What’s at issue is whether or not American soldiers witnessed or were aware of the massacre our Afghan allies committed. The US has denied that any US soldiers were present. However, Andrew McEntee, the former head of Amnesty International, says “There are questions for the Americans to answer. I believe there is clear evidence the Americans were there.” (Press Association News, 11/08/02). And according to an article in the Guardian (3/25/03), the German paper Die Zeit, after conducting an investigation, wrote “No one doubted that the Americans had taken part. Even at higher levels there are no doubts on this issue.”

Is it true? Heck if I know; I have no reason to doubt McEntee and Die Zeit, but nor do I know what evidence they’re drawing their conclusions from. What’s required is serious press attention, to either document or debunk the film’s claims. But we all know that won’t happen in the US, where serious criticisms of the Pentagon fall into a media black hole.

Thanks to Blueheron and Politics in the Zeros for pointing out this story..

The most detailed press accounts I’ve read of the massacre are the Guardian’s story from back in September, and the Sunday Herald Sun’s story from early February. Click on the link below for the full text of those articles.
Read the rest of this entry »

Most folks have some “word peeves” - some common use of language that irritates them to no end. What I can’t abide is the word “literally” used to mean “figuratively,” as in “I was literally beside myself in anger.”

What I didn’t realize until recently is that this language atrocity is nothing new; I’m just one of a long line of folks who have been annoyed by “misuse” of literally for generations (literally!). From dictionary.com:

So although I will continue to be annoyed by hearing “literally” used as an intensifier, I cannot claim it’s proof that the English language is being degraded. The language isn’t degrading; it came out of the box this way.

Go check out Counterspin for information and sources about this issue. (Thanks, Hesiod!)

Rumour has it that the fabulous sci-fi flop Firefly may be headed for the big screen. Normally I wouldn’t bother reporting a rumour, but the primary source of this rumour is Nathan Fillion - who, as the star of Firefly, presumably has inside info.

At the least, we Firefly fans can look forward to the DVD, which will include the three episodes that were never broadcast.

In other news, before Buffy ended Bean and I had to record Gilmore Girls (also broadcast at 8pm Tuesdays) so we could watch both series. There’s a very slim connection between Buffy and Gilmore Girls - both series were created by former Roseanne writers (Roseanne being yet another favorite show of mine).

Now there’s another, more direct connection - according to janeespenson.com, Jane Espenson, one of the better Buffy writers, will be joining the Gilmore Girls staff, as a “consulting producer” for GG and a writer for the spin-off show.

I’ve finally gotten around to seeing Farscape - we borrowed season one on DVD from the library. Geez, does that show stink! I mean, it eventually got good (about two-thirds into the season), but it took a while. Still, the muppets were good, and so were several of the actors. And I’m told that season one is the weakest season.

Ariel Sharon stunned the world on Monday by telling the truth:

Amazing as it is, I don’t take Sharon’s statement very seriously. Words are only words; watch the “facts on the ground” to know what’s really going on. Sharon knows that there will always be new attacks which to provide a handy excuse for backing out of peace talks, but by making such a speech now he takes pressure off the Bush administration without committing Israel to any actual concessions.

Meanwhile, the Wall keeps on being built. What is Sharon’s intention for the Wall – is it the land grab it looks like? From an article in Haaretz:

The Wall, as it is being constructed, appears to be an intentional land grab. That’s certainly how it will look to ordinary Palestinians. It’s unlikely that Palestinians will ever take the Israeli committment to a two-state solution seriously while the Wall is being built through their farms, and who can blame them?

Replying to an earlier post of mine, Allison at An Unsealed Room defends the Wall, writing:

Allison’s answer dodges the main issue. The question isn’t “should a security fence be built at all?” The question is “why is the security fence being built that grabs miles of prime land for Israel and destroys any chance of a viable Palestinian state, rather than being built along the green line?” As Inigo Gilmore argued in this past Sunday’s Telegraph, a wall built through Palestinian property and farmland is an incitement to Palestinian violence, and thus endangers Israelis (“There was peace here for 50 years - then the fence came”).

Allison also worries about how “border” Israeli communities - which, for most of the Wall, will in practice mean “settlement communities built on Palestinian land” - will suffer from the sight of an ugly wall. Compare the anguish of having to look at an ugly wall to what the Palestinians in Mazmuriah are facing:

(From “The Bad Fence” by Israeli Neve Gordon.)

Allison writes:

Again, what the Israeli goverment says is a lot less meaningful than what it does. Take a look at the before-and-after maps again:

Contrary to Allison’s claim, the fence is explicitly being built to accommodate Israeli settlements; protecting the settlements is obviously the point of much of the wall’s planned route. Even the Israeli government doesn’t deny this. As Amos Yaron, director-general of the Israeli defense ministry, has said, the fence “will pass wherever it can to protect Jews. And if I need to take it further in order to protect more Jewish settlements, then that is what I will do.” (By the way, if any critic of Israel conflated “Jewish’ and “Israeli” like Mr. Yaron does, they’d be accused of anti-Semitism in an eyeblink.)

Allison also claims that Israel’s critics have no suggestions of what Israel can do. Okay, here’s a suggestion: Tear this wall down and build a new security wall on the Green line. It’s true that a security wall can provide real safety to Israelis, from most suicide bombers. If Israel can build a fence to protect Israeli lives, of course it should.

But this wall uses Israeli security as an excuse for grabbing territory that isn’t Israel’s; saving Israeli lives has become an excuse for destroying Palestinian livelihood and lives. And in doing so, it not only harms countless innocent Palestinians (according to World Bank research, “a finished barrier could leave 95,000 Palestinians trapped in walled enclaves” - quoted from Newsday, 5/26/03), it makes peace less likely and therefore endangers innocent Israeli lives, too.

If the Israeli goverment really wants peace and safety for its people, it would be building the wall on the Green line. And if that’s what Israeli citizens want, they’ll have to learn to stop making excuses when their government grabs yet more Palestinian land.

P.S. I should mention, Allison and others caught me in a couple of errors. During a brain-fart, I stupidly linked Rachel Corrie to the Wall in my earlier post; and I complained only about Sharon, rather than including Barak in my criticism. But I think Allison mistakes nit-piking for debate.

The question is, why is a Wall being planned and built that has the effect of destroying any hope Palestine has of forming a viable state, and of unjustly grabbing huge swathes of land for Israel? Yes, I screwed up some minor facts; but the major fact - the Wall itself - is not in doubt, yet that’s the one fact that Allison refuses to address. Why not build a wall along the green line? Why build a wall that will obviously incite violence and be a barrier to peace talks?

Until Allison and my other critics answer those questions, they haven’t really defended the Wall at all.

Stephen Shalom provides an excellent quiz on Iraq war outcomes. Here’s a sample:

Take the whole quiz here.

(From the movie Dick Tracy, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.)

Yesterday it seemed the world was about to end, didn’t it?
Looked as though it woudln’t last out the year.
Yesterday disaster waited around the bend.
Well, my friend.
Spring is here.

Back in business, and ain’t it grand?
Let the good times roll.
Yesterday things were out of hand.
Now they’re under control.

Bye-bye blues, so long adversity.
Happiness, hello! (Hello! Hello!)
Keep the status quo
Permanently so!

Back again like a boomarang,
Same old stand,
Same old gang.
Back in business with a bang!
Let the good times roll!

Our host, successfulhosting.com (ha!), decided to update their database software, from Red Hat 6.2 to Red Hat 7.3. This means that the software used to run databases on our server has been upgraded. Unfortunately, we installed movable type using the earlier version. As a result, our server can no longer read our database. That means that we can no longer put up new blog entries, and also that no one can add new comments. (It’s not just us, actually - everyone with a Movable Type blog hosted on successfulhosting (ha) is having this problem).

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking - “Why, Ampersand, you poor, simpleminded, computer-illiterate, painfully handsome fool, that’s an easy fix!” Well, maybe it would be if our successfulhosting (ha!) account included command-line access. Alas, it does not.

So, pretty much, there’s nothing we can do but wait around for successfulhosting (HA! HA! HA!) to get around to running that easy fix themselves. (Or I could switch off of MT, or switch hosts, or start hard-coding new entries directly into html, which is how I’m adding this notice. But I’m not that desparate yet.)

When will it be fixed? The successfulhosting (you get the idea) techs tell us it will happen soon.

Any day now.