Uncategorized

New to the Left

Each day I list the blogs new to the linklist. Want to be added? Use the form, Luke. Entry does not guarantee winning. No purchase necessary. Offer void where prohibited. You must either be a fiery liberal spirit or be in the vanguard of the workers revolution to participate. At a pinch we’ll take dedicated left anarchists and the like as well. No wishy washy centrists need apply. The decision of the judges is final.

Frothing at the Mouth

Opinionated, egotistical, idiosyncratic, and, ideally, well-informed and thoughtful. By elmo.

Aron’s Israel Peace weblog

short commentary on news items, articles and op-ed pieces about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Alt.Muslim

A collective weblog that looks at the Muslim world from a progressive, principled perspective.

Top Stories Wednesday 20 Nov

Them Durn Lib’ruls is tired of gun control being a left versus right
wing issue:

I may agree with the NRA and ASRPA, and even GOA, more than with the typical liberal of today on this one issue, but the above illustrates why I still will have nothing to do with those groups. They are just stalking horses for the conservative right. They are more than willing to unfairly give Cordova a much lower rating than he deserves, because they are conservative ideologues. Except on one or two issues I have nothing in common with them.

I’m tired of these groups being stalking horses for the right wing. I’m tired of this having become a wedge issue for the right wing. Most of all, I resent that this has become a left/right issue to begin with. It shouldn’t be one. Back in 1968, the Gun Control Act of 1968 passed with “yes” votes split almost 50-50 between the two parties, and with “no” votes likewise split almost 50-50 between the parties. It wasn’t a liberal/conservative issue back then, it was an urban/rural issue.

Bertram Online on female genital mutilation, Islam and kneejerk legislation:

Strangely, things are being done to stop this hideous practice. Somalians who are against the procdure have been working ? successfully ? with social workers to make parents see that the procedure should not be performed. It is a long haul: reverting a 2,000 year old tradition. It is, actually, amazing that they have had the success that they have. Maybe encouraging ? and funding ? initiatives like these would help? But it is harder to stuff into a soundbyte, no doubt.

New to the left

Each day I list the blogs new to the linklist. Want to be added? Use the form, Luke. Entry does not guarantee winning. No purchase necessary. Offer void where prohibited. You must either be a fiery liberal spirit or be in the vanguard of the workers revolution to participate. At a pinch we’ll take dedicated left anarchists and the like as well. No wishy washy centrists need apply. The decision of the judges is final.

DrShrink

Politics, culture, reality. Ratings and discussions of the society we inhibit.

Top Stories Tuesday Nov 19

Ruminate This wants you to take action against the Homeland Security Bill:

Tell me, what exactly – who exactly – is this bill meant to protect? You? Me? Our families and friends? Apparently not…with passage of this bill, the special interests will have been appeased, and those at “Homeland Security” will have the wherewithall to spy on the citizenry whenever they’re so inspired. Just imagine this as a tool of political retribution. Imagine the havoc all this secrecy will play on our elections. Imagine careers being brought to an abrupt halt on the basis of confidential evidence. Not hard to fathom, eh? Especially with folks like Vice Admiral John Poindexter running the show; the same John Poindexter who was convicted of 5 felony counts for lying before Congress and destroying evidence. I suppose this shouldn’t come as a surprise from a government which was yesterday given the Green Light to Spy by the top secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. Add Homeland Security to that mix and all of us might as well just be barcoded. Is this Twilight Zone-ish America a place you any longer recognize?

Ignatz on class action lawsuits and why
corporate lobbyists are hard at work toreduce their availability:

So, speaking in terms of interest group politics, the company lobbyists would like to portray the relevant groups as “class action lawyers” vs. “the rest of the nation”. Being (as one part of my practice) a class action lawyer myself, I have a different view. And my view, I like to think, comes not only from being a class action lawyer but from being a consumer, like the other hundreds of millions of my American readers out there. Now, I recognize that class actions are sometimes an imprecise and imperfect way of redressing corporate or governmental misconduct. But until some better way is unveiled and made widely active ? and none has been, so far ? the real question (at least as to class actions against companies) becomes “do you think that corporations are being overdeterred, or underdeterred, from dicking over large numbers of consumers?” If you think that companies are overdeterred, then class actions should be made less available; if you think that companies feel too free to cheat us without real fear of consequences, then you should favor greater availability of class actions. When a company cheats a million people out of 10 or 50 or 500 or even a couple of thousand dollars each, there is of course no real prospect of a wave of individual lawsuits by the cheated. Nor is there any governmental agency that can keep an eye on all such shenanigans. It’s class actions, or nothing. Would you prefer “nothing”?

This Land is Your Land on the European
Social Forum in Florence, the new global movement, the recent arrest of several members of this movement recently, why Italy has a quite
literal Fascist penal code and much more. Too much to summarise properly, go read it now:

The fact is, accusing somebody – not to name names, Silvio Berlusconi – of having cooked books, paid kickbacks, and even corrupeted judges to have controversial business deal go his way is a political act only if there are no grounds for the claim. Accusing somebody of plotting not to overthrow the State but to “conspire to obstruct the action of the Governament and the established economic order” is a political accusation _itself_.