Are We the Bastard Children of RAND?
Describes the influence of RAND and how economist Kenneth Arrow developed Rational Choice theory, a value system where ‘consumer’s sovereignty’ was all and where self-interest defined all aspects of human activity. Things have never been the same since.

Norman Finkelstein’s Deportation from Israel

Why Norman Finkelstein is not anti-zionist and why it is nonsense that he should be denied entry to Israel. The best article on the topic that I have read so far.

Institute for Conjunctural Research: The Duty to Hate
Savonarola’s diagnosis of the Italian left’s malaise horribly parallels the situation in Britain, where New Labour’s abandonment of class antagonism has both allowed class politics to be displaced into race.

…thus the main factors driving this strong growth performance relate to the consolidation of a strong competitive position in an increasingly global international market augmented by a sizeable expansion in the supply of labour. Furthermore, the latter had been rendered significally more effective by sustained investment in education and training over a long period, especially [...]

The posters are up, opinion is shifting (or solidifying) and the campaign is entering its final stages. It seems opportune therefore to move on from simple criticism of Libertas (which seems to antagonise some of our more swashbuckling comrades) and other elements of the No campaign, and look the Treaty itself. Consider it [...]

McClellan Book Blasts White House - WSJ.com
The White House took part in an "endless effort to manipulate public opinion to their advantage" in promoting the invasion of Iraq declares former White House press secretary Scott McClellan. Well, you don’t have to be McClellan to know that.

Dennis Perrin: BANG! Just Kidding
Extending the LBJ’s neck-rophilia jape, Dennis Perrin muses on Hilary’s mention of the assassination of Obama fantasy, Liz Trotta’s ‘Osama, uh Obama, well both if we could’ wheeze and why the assassination of Black leaders is a national pastime.

Review of Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Called ‘nothing less than the secret history of what we call the ‘free market’ Shock Doctrine contains little that’s secret about this history, and the organizing metaphor explains nowhere near as much of the world we live in as she thinks it does

The Magnes Zionist: Finkelstein’s Deportation and the Reaction of Progressive Jews
Jerry Haber says that there is nothing that Norman Finkelstein has done or said including talking to Hizbollah that Chomsky has not done or said. Yet, would Israel deport Chomsky? ‘No blanking way’.

There is plenty in the news today about Jim Flavin’s decision to step down as executive chairman of DCC, on the foot of :
“a new legal manoeuvre against the company by the official enforcer of corporate law, Paul Appleby, who wants the High Court to appoint inspectors to investigate how it sold a major stake [...]