All of us barbarians here in the ethereal land are down on vegan’s for a variety of reasons. But their fundamental problem is that they are not connected to reality in anyway. This from the New York Times….
When Crown Shakur died of starvation, he was 6 weeks old and weighed 3.5 pounds. His vegan Click Here to continue reading.
This week’s rant is from someone who has an unusual problem. She lives in an area that has been coming under constant rocket attack from Hamas and she tries to deal with the mental problems that result. If you remember that people who live with this fear and suffer from these attacks vote, you will go a long was towards understanding Israeli politics in the years to come.
The Cyber Assault on Estonia…..
The Russians are not giving up. The cyber attacks on Estonian keep getting worse. Yesterday over one million computers were used to attack Estonian. It will be interesting to see if the Estonian’s ever figure out a really good way to fix the problem short of cutting off all accesses to their computers from outside the country.
The best defense would be a good offense. But I imagine that the Estonian’s are a little nervous about trying a cyber assault on Russia. They are a little outnumbered when it comes to manpower on the ground.
You can read the latest on cyber attacks on Estonian here and here.
In America older people tend to vote more conservatively than the rest of the population. Apparently, the French are no different. According to this article in the in The Independent (h/t tompeters! and the Brussels’s Journal) Sarkozy would not have won the recent election in France if it were not for the over 60 crowd. Click Here to continue reading.
This week’s poem of the week is East Coker. With this week’s essay and rant as well as other things I have been reading this week, it just seemed appropriate to continue working through Eliot’s Four Quartets.
This week’s rant of the week comes from my favorite British police officer who calls himself Inspector Gadget. He captures the feelings that I have when my path crosses with those lost souls that I can’t really do anything to help.
It is a shame that the works and life of Vaclav Havel are not better known. We are so use to what politicians are that we are unprepared for Havel. A politician who can actually think and has principles seems like something out of a fairy tale. We find it hard to believe even as we are face to face with the evidence.
This week’s essay of the week is short speech that Havel gave on what he thought were the deficiencies in the modern western political consensus. I don’t agree with him in every respect (you can see some of my thoughts on the same issue here and here) but I have to admire the evident thought he put into the problem.
If you want an idea of how well Havel’s philosophical thought translated into his politics you can read this piece from Reason Magazine.
First off, the Dutch are basically going to do away with prison sentences…
Most criminals in the Netherlands should be able to serve their sentence at home in the future. Justice Minister Hirsch Ballin is to introduce house arrest as a new main punishment. Criminals can then also visit friends or a mosque for two hours a day.
Now I am not a big fan of prison sentences. I think there are lot better ways of handling criminals. But letting people sit at home and paying them welfare checks does not strike me as being better then prison. This from the same article…
Those under house arrest will receive welfare payments. Only if they run a company from their living-room or do other work that yields sufficient money will they receive no financial support from the minister. They can also do a home course.
“House arrest is experienced as a real punishment,” according to a spokesman for Hirsch Ballin. “At the same time, social networks remain in place.”
But the Dutch have their priorities straight at least. They fined a dude for calling an animal rights group terrorists….
Leeuwarden appeal court has sentenced a vet, J. Plantema, to pay damages of 200,000 euros to animal rights group WakkerDier. He called them terrorists. It is unique for abuse of freedom of speech to lead to such a high fine.
And who runs WakkerDier?
Wakker Dier is headed by Sjoerd van de Wouw. At another action group, VMO, he was the right-hand man of Volkert van der Graaf, who assassinated politician Pim Fortuyn with gunshots in 2002. Currently, Van de Wouw is assistant to the Party for Animals (PvdD), which has two seats in the Lower House.
From time to time I read blogs such as The Gates of Vienna and The Brussels Journal that are devoted to the “coming culture clash between Moslems and the West.” I go to these blogs because sometimes they alert me to interesting stories and issues that I would otherwise miss. Yet they always leave Click Here to continue reading.
It is somewhat absurd to write a review of Richard Fernandez‘ blog ‘The Belmont Club‘. All of those who might be interested in The Belmont Club have probably come across it already. It has got to be one of the most widely read political blogs out there.
But I read the Belmont Club often enough Click Here to continue reading.