Good or bad news?

The title to this piece isn't meant to be funny or ironic: it's a genuine question. According to the Times of Israel, Ahmanedinejad...

Explain it away

Please . Oh, and add Northern Ireland to the list, for fairness sake.

How Israeli courts protect Israel from itself

There is a constant refrain among the nay-sayers on Israel that Israel is constantly breaching the human rights of the Palestinians, and, in...

This is why The Fat Man

And this is the problem with the moral outrage of moral people who recoil at the killing. If their anger is devoid of context and forgetful ...

Fatwa against Christmas and Facebook

In a normal course of events I would have skipped this blighted subject: verbal shenanigans of a certain imam or pastor or rabbi are interes...

Inhabiting Rekab Street (that's Baker Street backwards)

This is an interesting variation of the Nick Cohen thesis found in "What's Left". The main advantage is that it takes a lot le...

The fragility and strength of democracy

I've just come back from a lecture sponsored by the Electoral Reform International Services organisation (and for those of you with know...

What price freedom?

In this post I raise what I consider to be a real problem for those of us who are lovers of freedom: how far do we restrict other people...

Testing, testing

"Kalashnikov's answering machine". If you find the above funny, please say so in the comments. If not, please say so in the co...

Why won't the EU declare Hezbollah a terrorist organisation?

Why do the bulk of the European Union countries (including my own, the UK) insist on an artificial distinction between Hezbollah the armed w...

Vanessa Redgrave: a woman of causes

She is a good actress. In fact, and I am saying this carefully, not being a connoisseur, she is a wonderful actress. Her acting is one of th...

"Innocence of Muslims", "Sam Bacile", cheap scoops and Faux News

As it happens frequently in the Muslim world, another manifestation of rage already took several lives, including that of American ambassado...

On elasticity of marriage and the unthought about consequences of activism

By Isaac Schrödinger . Interesting.