Pinging stuff I care about.
ABC News: Israelis Compare Pullout Plan to Holocaust
JERUSALEM Dec 21, 2004 %u2014 Igniting a public uproar, some Jewish settlers said Tuesday they will soon start wearing orange stars on their shirts in a provocative campaign comparing the government’s Gaza withdrawal plan to the Nazi Holocaust.
“Newly Obtained FBI Records Call Defense Department’s Methods “Torture,” Express Concerns Over “Cover-Up” That May Leave FBI “Holding the Bag” for Abuses” — link. Via BuzzFlash.
Holy *crap*.
The New Zealand Herald has an article about the authors of “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” suing the author of “The Da Vinci Code” for stealing their intellectual property.
The funny thing is that there ought to be no way that they can maintain that their book is factual and that someone has stolen it.
If they are describing reality, then that is not their creation and not their intellectual property.
If what they have written is their creation, then it is fictional, which they do not want to admit.
From ABC News:
MOSCOW Dec 20, 2004 — A U.S.-based organization that tracks the progress of political rights and civil liberties across the world said Monday that Russia had fallen to the status of “not free” far behind the democratic nations Moscow sees as its peers.
“Russia’s step backward into the ‘Not Free’ category is the culmination of a growing trend under President Vladimir Putin to concentrate political authority, harass and intimidate the media, and politicize the country’s law-enforcement system,” Freedom House Executive Director Jennifer Windsor said in a statement.
“These moves mark a dangerous and disturbing drift toward authoritarianism in Russia, made more worrisome by President Putin’s recent heavy-handed meddling in political developments in neighboring countries, such as Ukraine,” the statement said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment on the report.
What? They’re dissing on Bush’s best buddy “Pooty-Poot”? But Bush looked into his soul and saw a kindred spirit! How can this be?
Seriously. Check out my two favorite Episcopalian bloggers: Father Jake has to get over his snarkiness about mixing up Advent and Christmas, and PJ is all disgrumpled about “badly done liturgy” which sends her “into hysterics.”
We’re not attending our local Episcopalian church anymore for reasons unrelated to grumpy elitism and not something to go into in a blog, and there are a lot of things to miss about it, but that’s one thing I don’t miss.
Maybe it’s insecurity about the whole King James affair that permanently infected Anglican churches with this kind of reactionary prissiness; I don’t know.
We dislike most seeing that in others which we deny in ourselves, and this particular kind of crankiness — though not on this particular topic — is something I’m prone to in myself, though I don’t like it. So take this all as a confession disguised as an accusation.