We all knew that John Howard wanted to bring back the 50s. We just didn’t realise that he meant the 1750s.
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Perusing the New Years honours list, as one is wont to do in this merry season, one noticed a rosy name with a colourful past – John Scarlett, CMG, OBE, and now KCMG, knighted in recognition of deeds done in service of Crown and Commonwealth.
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In his latest article in defense of Carter, Norman Finkelstein appears to have really gone a bit over the top. What he seems to be trying to do is to justify Carter’s refusal to debate the abominable Alan Dershowitz at Brandeis University. Carter has been widely quoted, "I don’t want to have a conversation even indirectly with Dershowitz, There is no need for me to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine."
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Is it really possible that the Pulitzer Prize winning ex NY Times journo, Chris Hedges, thinks he’s saying something new?  Granted, it’s only today that I got his 18 December article from Jewish Voice for Peace, but it was pretty old stuff even then.  His central point appears to be that what the Palestinians are facing is, in the words of his title, ‘Worse than apartheid’. But it was two years earlier, on 15 December 2004, when JVP sent around Moshe Machover’s article, from which I take the liberty of quoting,
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I’ve always thought everybody knew about the Nuremberg Principles. Even people who had no idea where Nurenberg is were at least aware of the fourth principle:
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Sometimes I wonder about Scott Adams, but check this out (unless you can’t handle split infinitives!).

According to Ha’aretz, two Belgian UN peacekeepers became the latest victims of Israel’s fabled ‘purity of arms’ when one of them stepped on one of the estimated 1 million unexploded cluster bomblets the retreating invaders left behind in August.  As they both survived, they will not contribute to the toll of 28 killed so far from Israel’s little surprises.

As I was writing this, the Washington Post announced that they’d already done the dirty deed.

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David Sifry reports:
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A few weeks back, we brought you the story of the American Secret Service’s move into retailing personal beauty products. Here’s the puff for the spook brand shaving cream.

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People here have probably followed the saga of Mr Lefty, whose site Anonymous Lefty was hacked and stolen by some rightard creep. The real Mr Lefty now blogs here, and I’m sure he’d appreciate some support. 
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Absolutely extraordinary. First Gray explicitly expresses his disappointment that the A.B.C, has not appointed a censor.
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James Brown as the apostle of self-improvement through individual effort? Well, maybe.

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Scott Hamilton’s always excellent Reading the Maps looks at Edward Upward’s The Rotten Elements (which I’d always dismissed as one of the dreariest novels of all times) to frame an interesting discussion of politics and literature. Read it here.