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Category Archives: Middle east

Coke and Carob

JULIA Gillard has denounced the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement ahead of anti-Israeli protest action planned at the University of NSW today. BDS action at UNSW has turned ugly, with anti-Semitic and Holocaust-denying material appearing on a Facebook page opposing the opening of a Max Brenner chocolate shop on campus. Postings on a Facebook page [...]

Against free markets

The term that is. There seem to be few usages that are a greater barrier to clear thought and debate than free markets. Whether used as a term of sneering abuse to create straw-person arguments or as a slogan of the right and proper, it is ready-made to close minds and abstract away from the issues [...]

You are correct: westerners care more about Boston than Baghdad – guest post by Jacques Chester

[SL: I have long been of the view--while I have great sympathy for my libertarian and leftist friends who want calamity in the developing world taken as seriously as calamity in the developed world--that the lesson that Jacques teaches below is important, and needs to be taken seriously. There is a reason why 'if it [...]

What’s left out

In a his excellent The World Is Not Enough blog, Charles Richardson comments on an essay by Israeli journalist Yossi Gurvitz.  Gurvitz’s essay applies the analogy of Germans expelled from the Sudetenland, Silesia, Prussia etc after 1945 to the Palestinians expelled from Israel in 1947-48. As Charles notes, it is a revealing analogy. But revealing not [...]

Some words in favour of monarchy

I rather like monarchy.  I like the pomp and ceremony. I like the sense of continuity. (The Papacy, the Japanese monarchy, the English monarchy and the Danish monarchy are the oldest political institutions on the planet; the English coronation ceremony has elements that date back to Anglo-Saxon times.) I like monarchy’s capacity to separate the [...]

Harry’s Game

Prince Harry shot at Taliban insurgents during his time as an Army helicopter pilot in Afghanistan, he says. The prince, whose four-month deployment to the country has just ended, spoke about his role as an Apache co-pilot gunner, and whether he had killed. “Yeah, so lots of people have. The squadron’s been out here. Everyone’s [...]

How things look depend on where you stand

This post from Stratfor points out that the US faces much less stressful challenges than the EU or China or Iran. So, the re-elected President Obama faces a world where the US’s hand, vis-a-vis other Powers, is strengthening rather than weakening. I really don’t get the angst about President Obama’s foreign policy. Yes, he has [...]

The social consequences of theology

The BBC recently noted that interest rates on public debt in the Eurozone varied according to the religious majority of the population — Orthodox Greece had the highest interest rates, followed by the Catholic countries with the Protestant countries having the lowest. Interest rates being a measure of risk, this represented clear market judgements on [...]

Subcultures

A feature of modern life is the creation of sub-cultures. Goth, punk, gay, BDSM, etc. Or sub-cultures within sub-cultures, such as the bear community with the gay community. Given the creation of large, anonymous cities, mobility, capacity to produce for niche markets and human diversity, subcultures are likely a natural creation of modern life. Culturally [...]

Delusions of Relevance

  About 200 Muslims have staged a protest outside the Scottish Parliament. The group were demonstrating against the anti-Islam film, Innocence Of Muslims, made in the US, which has caused offence across the Muslim world. The rally was attended by Muslims from across Edinburgh who were demanding action to curb religious hatred. Demonstrators waved banners [...]