Sometimes those of us who live in the real world of ordinary people who have asense of what is rational and what is not tend to forget that there is another world out there of people whose fevered imaginations take them into regions of bizarre speculation.
Unfortunately, it looks like the provocateur who made the anti-Muslim film Innocence of Muslims has got the result he wanted, creating turmoil in the Middle East. [Read more…]
TPMMuckraker tries to get at the facts behind who made the anti-Muslim film.
It is very murky indeed and may take quite a while to unravel.
Once again, as an American presidential election looms, the Israeli government is seeking to use it to achieve its own political goals. What is extraordinary is the highly public nature of its efforts. After his embassy in the US complained openly that president Obama would not re-arrange his schedule to meet with him on a recent visit to the US, itself a remarkable diplomatic faux pas, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now laying down ultimatums to the US about what it should do about Iran. [Read more…]
Muslims are notoriously prone to violent anger when their god or their prophet is portrayed at all, let alone in an unflattering light. Militants have thought nothing about even murdering those whom they think have transgressed against their faith. Today comes reports of the latest atrocity, the murder of American diplomats in Libya in retaliation for the purported showing on an internet video that supposedly disrespects the religious beliefs of Muslims. [Read more…]
I did not watch the speeches by Ann Romney or Michelle Obama at the conventions though I did see a few clips. Both speeches were highly praised by media commentators, the latter particularly so, as ‘touching the hearts’ of the audience and ‘humanizing’ their spouses by showing their virtues as husbands and fathers and as gosh-darned wonderful human beings. [Read more…]
Like most US presidential elections, the Electoral College structure means that those states that are seen as already sure to assign their electoral votes (EV) to one or other of the two major presidential candidates tend to be ignored, with all the attention focused on the so-called battleground states where the outcome is uncertain. In this election, those states are seen as Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Virginia. Mitt Romney is also throwing some money at Wisconsin since he hopes that since his running mate Paul Ryan is from that state, he might be able to nudge that from Democratic into battleground status. [Read more…]
John McWhorter is a linguist who wrote an excellent book The Power of Babel on the evolution of language that I discussed about five years ago. He writes good essays on rhetorical styles and has analyzed the differences between the Clinton and Obama speeches at the Democratic convention. [Read more…]
Many of us have argued that people Like George W. Bush and Tony Blair should be tried for war crimes. There was even a British TV film called The Trial of Tony Blair that had this as the plot. I saw that film and it was good but it was clearly fantasy. Since war crimes prosecutions are only for those whom the US government views as undesirable, it was unthinkable that this would ever occur. [Read more…]
The Mitt Romney campaign must surely be concerned about the lack of support for it in the black community, with some surveys putting it at an astounding zero percent. In response, they have set up a Black Leadership Council, no doubt to bring more African-Americans into the fold. [Read more…]