April, 2011 archive

James Carroll, writing at the Boston Globe, looks at the history of Christian prejudice against Islam. A nugget:

From early on, Western civilization understood itself positively against the negative foil of Islam, a polarity that was institutionalized during the decisive centuries of the Crusades. That Christendom failed to liberate the Holy Land from infidel control only made permanent the fear and hatred of Islam.

Meanwhile, as is always true of bigotry, Europeans knew very little about actual Muslims. The Koran dates to the seventh century, but there was no Latin translation of the sacred text until the middle of the 12th century. The first “approximately objective account of Islam and the prophet,’’ in the phrase of the theologian Hans Kung, did not appear in Europe until the 18th century — a book that was promptly censored by the church. None of this stopped Christians from assuming they knew what Islam was, right from the start.

There seems to be something in human nature that longs to have enemies and perpetuate enmity.

Bill Maxwell considers their tactics. A nugget:

Many professors and most legal scholars say that Wisconsin’s GOP and the think tanks have a right to request Cronon’s e-mails through FOIA. I agree. The problem is that the reason given for the requests — protecting the interests of taxpayers — is disingenuous at best. Clearly, the aim of conservatives, with ammunition provided by their favored think tanks, is to muzzle professors.

On the Media also covers the story. From their website:

The Wisconsin GOP has filed an open records request for the e-mails of University of Wisconsin Professor William Cronon . Cronon and others say the GOP is trying to silence his criticism of the labor dispute in WI. The GOP says the request is perfectly legal and they need not explain what they intend to do with the e-mails. We wanted to ask a FOIA expert to weigh in. RCFP’s Lucy Dalglish explains that the law is on the GOP’s side.

Follow the link to listen or read the transcript, scheduled to be posted today, or listen below:

Asia Times tries to provide some context for the killings in Afghanistan that have been so loudly linked to Christianist crackpot Terry Jones’s Quran burning.

It’s a long and dense article.

Nevertheless, I recommend following the link above as a means for getting beyond the navel-gazing of the U. S. news media. Even if the article has only a piece of the picture, it shows that there’s a lot more to this than the actions of the bile-filled leader of an obscure Christian hate group.

Bill Maher:

If Bachmann and Palin get in, that’s two bimbos.

And then there’s Mitt Romney, the millionaire, and Newt Gingrich, a professor.

We just need a skipper and a buddy and we’ve got ‘Gilligan’s Island.’

From OhMyGov:

Researchers Feng Chi and Nathan Yang, both of the University of Toronto, recently authored the report “Twitter Adoption in Congress.” According to the report’s abstract, the main objective is “to determine whether successes of past adopters have the tendency to speed up Twitter adoption, where past success is defined as the average followers per Tweet – a common measure of ‘Twitter success’ – among all prior adopters.”

Chi and Yang, using the 111th Congress as their model, are seeking to determine whether the relative success of a veteran tweeter (think Barack Obama, who has been online since 2007) has influenced others to join up, and in turn led those newer tweeters to gain followers and inspire yet another wave. This is a classic domino effect theory in some ways, except it is strictly limited to 140 characters and somehow involves Michelle Bachmann and Dennis Kucinich.

Twits, indeed.

Besides whacking education jobs and trashing university research, the Texas Legislature is considering yet another way to avoid raising even one more precious penny of tax money.

A state Senate subcommittee on Medicaid spending is offering its own final solution:

Let people die.

Our very own death panel voted last week against adding $23 million in lifesaving medications for poor Texans with HIV, essentially turning away the 2,000 new patients who will need help in the next two years.

It is difficult to comprehend to callousness of the Republican Party–so difficult that most avert their eyes, refusing to notice that their talk of “fiscal responsibility” masks abandoning the concept of the public good in every way possible.

Follow the link.

One of the folks who frequents the Linux Questions forums has this in his signature:

War is how Americans learn geography.

Which leads into Clarence Page’s comments on the rebellion in the Ivory Coast, where the newly elected president is being prevented from taking office by his predecessor:

He (Gbagbo–ed.) was voted out of office on Nov. 28, but decided not to leave. International election observers, the United Nations and the African Union agree that his opponent, Alassane Ouattara, won and they want Gbagbo to go. Yet, Ouattara has been relegated to operating a government-in-exile in a hotel circled by tanks, razor wire and a U.N. force.

Unlike the situation in Libya, Ouattara has had a fairly disciplined rebel force on his side, waging a war to unseat Gbagbo at a cost of at least 400 lives and as many as a million refugees.But that’s not enough for the Ivory Coast to get much news coverage or attention in the United States. It is the Ivory Coast’s misfortune to have little strategic value to America or our allies, except perhaps as the world’s top cocoa producer.

Follow the link to find out what’s going on there and why, even though the Ivory Coast does not pump oil, it’s important.