Entre Nous / Musings of a former Belgian

Blog Fatigue

Gil Shterzer is throwing in the towel after two years of usually engaging blogging. His studies are probably putting too much of a drain on his time: I myself barely have time to sleep these days, and when I have time to roam the web for non-work related stuff, I end up finding so much stuff to blog about that I don't know where to start.

The blogs with the most "staying power" I have seen generally seem to fall into three categories: (a) very smart people with time on their hands (like The Captain); (b) people who either for whom blog-type media research is at least ancillary to their daytime job; (c) group blogs. Instapundit is a combination of the latter two, in that much of his material is actually by reader referral.

Meanwhile, as I go catch some kip before diving into another 14-hour (enjoyable, really!) workday, The Atlantic Monthly has an interview with controversial Israeli "new historian" Benny Morris that will surprise both friend and foe.

A funeral dirge for eyes gone blind

While I was away, Spain of course had its 3/11 outrage. But those hoping that Spain (and Europe in general) would now "wake up to the real world" --- the only ray of light one could hope for on such a black day --- were deeply disappointed. Indeed, the Spanish electorate (or at least one segment of it) gave Al-Qaeda what it wanted: they decided that, if they only bent over and grabbed their ankles distanced themselves from the "coalition of the willing", the Islamofascist crocodile might at least apply some vaseline eat them last. André Glucksmann, the French liberal philosopher, notes the ironic parallel between Franco's "Viva la muerte" and the death-worship of the radical Islamists. (Hat tip: Tim Blair.)

Meanwhile in Israel, we saw the pathetic spectacle of the ultra-appeasenik Meretz party now selling itself as a "social democratic" party, led by a quintessential North Tel-Aviv yuppie heavily subsidized by the European Union. (Israel's underclass as a rule rates people like Yossi Beilin only marginally above Yasser Arafat.) This is the very man who could not even get elected to the Knesset and then started doing a type of freelance foreign policy that would (at least theoretically: there isn't a lot of jurisprudence on the Logan Act) land him in jail in the US. This is also the Ashkenazi ultra-secular "post-Zionist" yuppie who sees no trouble making common cause with the Shas party --- ultrareligious, tainted by corruption scandals, obscurantist, and with a "spiritual" leader --- Ayatollah Abdallah Yusuf Ovadia Yosef --- who routinely spews outrageous anti-Ashkenazi bigotry. (Since the day he claimed Shoah victims died in atonement for sins in past lives, I refuse on principle to defile the word "rabbi" by applying it to him.)

Following their electoral drubbing in the last elections, Meretz (now called Yahad) clearly needed to do something to avoid sliding into complete political irrelevancy. In fact, Beilin's rival for the party leadership, Iraqi-born Ran Cohen, is a veteran parliamentarian with an established record of social-democratic type initiatives as well as "street credibility". He did well --- and might have been able to "reinvent" the party --- but not well enough. As it is, even longtime adherents like Larry Derfner are voting with their feet.

Anthem of the heart, anthem of the mind

A funeral dirge for eyes gone blind...

Decapitation (literally) strike

Back from a long and exhausting (but rewarding) business trip, I woke up to the news that Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder and "spiritual" leader of Hamas, has been eliminated. Israel Radio mentioned the lurid detail that a bystander was seen carrying away his severed head.

Israel is bracing itself for revenge attacks.

My only question concerning Yassin is whether he earned his death a hundred times over, or merely fifty. Yet what is just is not always what is wise. We can only hope that Ariel Sharon knows what he is doing. At any rate, unlike his predecessor Ehud Barak, Sharon is not wont to utter empty threats, and it had been announced so many times in reponse to recent Hamas terror attacks that "the leadership, including Yassin, is not immune from elimination" that the latest outrage in Ashdod harbor essentially meant some Hamas head was going to roll or Israel's threats would lose creditibility.

For those not up on their history: Yassin originally sat in an Israeli prison until a 1997 botched assassination attempt on Hamasshole Khaled Mash`al forced Israel to exchange him for Mossad agents captured in Jordan. Then-PM and current finance minister Binyamin Netanyahu (a brilliant spokesman but a clearly incompetent PM) had pressed for the operation despite apparent (operational) misgivings on the part of the operatives.

UPDATE: Getty Images has extremely graphic pictures. (Hat tip: LGF, which also has a merciless parody on the BBC's "life in pictures" of Yassin.)

Red Herrings

Goodbye Super Tuesday (II)

Edwards throws in the towel, essentially crowning Johnny Ketchup as the Democratic nominee. One of our local newspapers over the weekend quoted Bush Jr. as saying (my reverse translation): "The Democrats have a very interesting and diverse group of candidates. For and against war in Iraq, for and against gay marriage, for and against [this and that and the other]... And all that is just one candidate!"

UPDATE: This story (via LGF) would be hilarious if it weren't so sad. The article has the original Bush quote, by the way:

The candidates are an interesting group with diverse opinions: for tax cuts and against them; for Nafta and against Nafta; for the Patriot Act and against the Patriot Act; in favor of liberating Iraq and opposed to it.

And that's just one senator from Massachusetts.

Also, the generally very reliable urban legend debunking site snopes.com refutes rumors that Johnny Heinz Kerry obtained his wartime decorations in a shady way. On the other hand, this article, if factual, makes one wonder whether Kerry's own post-Vietnam testimony may not be the 1247th classic case of Freudian "projection".

The more I see...

I hate to say "told you so" but the Tennenbaum affair gets uglier and uglier.