Here’s a round up of some of the posts you may have missed this week.
I enjoyed reading about the discomfiture of some of the BDS crowd when Norman Finkelstein (who has already caused consternation for describing the boycott movement as a cult) went all two-state at a recent event.
He challenged the latent hypocrisy within the anti-Israel movement (and his co-panelists), which constantly points to international law to justify its agenda while ignoring the fact that international law established Israel as a Jewish state. “How does one propose to win support for the Palestinian cause based on international law yet not support two states? That just doesn’t make any sense to me,” he said.
Having been sorry not to be able to hear Mehdi Hasan debate Irshad Manji back in March, I was glad to have the opportunity to watch them go head to head on Al Jazeera. It was a fascinating and (I thought) constructive exchange – I hadn’t seen Manji before and I was impressed by her sharp and spirited performance.
Here’s a link to an interesting piece by Nick Cohen in the Spectator, in which he explores whether paranoid hysteria can ever be useful:
There is a danger of using alarmist language when writing about the behaviour of the secret state. But there is an equal danger of not being alarmed enough. Freedoms survive because people struggle for them. You can mock their willingness to descend into hyperbole, but without it they cannot emphasise dangers at a time when new technologies are giving dangerous new means of control to the state. The price of liberty is not just eternal vigilance but perpetual exaggeration.
Hysteria is also to the fore in this punchy post from Futile Democracy, ‘a list of things gay marriage leads to’. Here are just a few of these –
Gay propaganda Disney films. here.
The 2008 Financial crash. Here.
Michael Savage puking, continuously. Here.
‘Sexual anarchy’ that will destroy the soul of America. Here.
Rob Marchant linked to a worrying story about allegations that the employer of a Labour candidate who was challenging a union-backed rival was threatened with losing valuable contracts unless the candidate withdrew.
‘Some of the unions behave disgracefully and it should be stopped, but people are scared to speak out,’ said a Unite-backed Labour MP in a Commons bar last week, while nervously looking around to check he had not been overheard by any colleagues.
There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by Ms Murphy or Mr Poynton, who is married to moderate Labour MP Gemma Doyle.
A Labour spokesman said: ‘The Labour Party has acted swiftly and thoroughly to deal with this issue. As soon as complaints were made about irregularities in relation to new members of the Falkirk CLP the selection of a candidate was suspended and an inquiry was set up.
‘Appropriate action will be taken if the inquiry reports Labour Party rules have been broken.’
Here’s a thought-provoking post by Steve Hynd about feminism and gender, written in response to 17 year old Jinan Younis’s experiences after setting up a feminist society in her school. And Sarah McAlpine touches on some related issues on this good piece about rape porn.
And finally – nothing to do with politics – an intriguing piece about the mysterious Voynix manuscript. What is the explanation behind this incomprehensible Medieval manuscript which appears not to be quite random, and yet which no code-breaker has yet been able to decipher. With Howie’s recent post in mind – could the truth be – out there?
