Grey Wool Knickers

These are my links for March 23rd through April 3rd:

• ZNet – Cowardice Pays: Reflections on Academic Abdication and a Paul Krugman Lecture in Iowa City – Excellent piece criticizing the defeatist attitudes of even the most “lefty” of mainstream academic pundits and their professorial minions Annotated link
• NDP admits involvement in anti-Bahai’s sectarian arson at 3arabawy
• Op-Ed Columnist – Learning How to Think – NYTimes.com – I usually detest Kristof, but this was actually quite good. A scientific study skewering experts and pundits (like Kristof).
• Settlers Attack Israeli Police Disguised as Arabs – Kfar Sava Magistrates Court, a local court, criticized the police for putting officers’ lives in danger.
• Gays sentenced to death in Iraq, executions to begin next week – “According to Ali Hili of Iraqi-LGBT, the Iraqi authorities plan to start executing them in batches of 20 from this week.”
• Arundhati Roy: This is not a war on terror. It is a racist war on all Tamils
• Officer, dog square off against Modesto mob of 60 – I’ve spent most of my life trying to undermine the logic of “law and order”, but as much as I hate cops, I’m no fan of armed thugs, no matter what uniform they wear. As the state begins to lose its grip on its traditional monopoly on the use of violence, I think it behooves us to consider what we will put in its place.
• not harmless he: Robbing the rich to give to the incredibly rich – “Madoff is just one in a thousand sketchy-ass rich dudes, who take people’s money. the big difference here is that he stole from other rich people.”
• French workers detain four Caterpillar executives – Europe, World – The Independent – “Locking up managers is becoming a common practice in France when mass lay offs are announced, with police apparently reluctant to intervene to avoid violence.”
• Daily News Egypt – Bloggers speak of time in detention
• Five held over suspected plot to disrupt G20 summit with explosives stunt | World news | guardian.co.uk – “It’s political, it relates to political organisations, it’s not extreme but it’s a different political view. It leads to motives and things like that.” Scottland Yard is clearly populated by morons.
• «المصرى اليوم» تكشف: الجامعة الأمريكية بالقاهرة تعاقدت مع «البنتاجون» لتقديم معلومات سرية عن مصر – Arabic version of the Al-Masry Al-Youm article detailing yet another of the many public secrets that bureaucrats the Obama administration are making less secret these days: that the US military is funding defense-related research through its educational institutions abroad.
• London cops reach new heights of anti-terror poster stupidity – Boing Boing – Essentially, this redefines “suspicious” as anything outside of the direct experience of the most frightened, ignorant and foolish people in any neighborhood.
• American University in Cairo Signed Contract with the Pentagon to Provide Confidential Information about Egypt-Almasry Alyoum – Evidence of what everyone already know
• We predict a riot: Meet the anarchists plotting to overthrow capitalism – Home News, UK – The Independent – For a sensationalist piece about anarchist direct-action activists, it could be worse.
• Teacher Dude’s Grill and BBQ: What on (Google) earth is Teacher Dude doing? – Teacher Dude blogs (on Google-owned Blogspot) about photographing the Google Maps Street View Car photographing him
• Daily News Egypt – Egyptian blogger released after 49 days without charge
• Jami Tarn: Smearing Tristan Anderson – Debra Saunders’ piece of tripe trashing Tristan Anderson has been circulating across the blogosphere and has apparently been reprinted in every small-town POS daily with an editorial board that has an axe to grind with direct-action activists (“tree-huggers” in idiot parlance). “Jami Tarn” delivers a good retort. Annotated link
• Ward Churchill v. “The Good Americans”: How Churchill’s Critics Made His Case « OPEN ANTHROPOLOGY -
• Homesteaders in the Hood – I doubt that there will be much success in legislating squatter’s rights or homesteading laws, nor do I think there’s much use in using our energies to work towards this. The State and the market created this problem, so why should we wait for them to legitimate our means of coping with it?
• Anti-teenager “pink lights to show up acne” :: Dan Lockton – Why does Britain hate it’s youth so much?
• The Big Takeover : Rolling Stone – A long but very informative piece about the “global economic crisis.”
• Dissident Voice : Turkey’s Fallout with Israel Deals Blow to Settlers – Turkey agrees to allow Palestinian families access to Ottoman archives that show that Jesish land deeds were forged
• Rod Dreher: Food safety shouldn’t kill farmers markets | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Columnists: Rod Dreher – USDA is seeking to mandate electronic tracking of livestock through chip implants for producers of all sizes as a “food safety” measure. Unfortunately, the large agri-business firms who have created the food safety problems in the first place are the only ones who can afford to comply with the mandate, while small farmers will be pushed out of business.
• What Big Agra firm owns your favorite Nature-y brand?
• Parents of injured American peace activist demand justice from Israel | World news | guardian.co.uk – Aside from the obligatory reiteration of the IOF line at the end of the article and the lack of any mention of the violence going on in the immediate vicinity of the press conference (see previous bookmark), this is a decent article
• Israeli police violently prevent cultural festival in occupied East Jerusalem, several arested | International Solidarity Movement Palestine
• Israeli troops shut down press conference with injured American’s parents
• As projects grind to a halt, home sites turn to wasteland – Los Angeles Times – We’ve got this kind of theft and squatting in the desert community where I’m living, but it’s an active construction site. I don’t find the bonfires particularly scary, but the acrid smoke from the plastic they burn for fuel makes me ill.