With Karl’s great post below, I have nothing to compete, but if you haven’t checked it out already, you may wish to get a look at this excellent synopsis by Richard Baehr, Why Europe Abandoned Israel. I found this highlighted comment from BBC News’s “Have Your Say” humorous: “Kids should stay at school for as long as it takes for them to learn how to behave in a civilised society.”

Note: With Jeff G allegedly returning full-time on Monday, I want to thank him for giving me the opportunity to post rambling pieces like this one. What is the nature of the global war on terror? Is calling it a global war on terror a step in the wrong direction? To what extent is it fought in and shaped by shaped by the global media environment? Is the US ignoring,

Resisting sodomization with a stick.  Not that it’s Abu-Ghraib-like, or anything.  I mean, brown-on-brown violence is just de rigueur. An Egyptian man filmed being sexually assaulted in jail by police officers, has himself been imprisoned on a charge related to the same incident. Imad Kabir was jailed for three months for “resisting authority”, a sentence that has shocked his defence lawyers. Last year, Mr Kabir was seen in widely circulated

Almost 2 millenia after Mt. Vesuvius last blew its top, destroying Pompei, Italians living in the vicinity of the volcano still have not come up with a viable escape plan should the volcano threaten to blow again.  Within 20km (12 miles) of its crater live almost three million people – and every one of them, say the geologists, is at risk. Their evidence comes from research, now completed, which shows