My contribution this week is an essay titled “The Tyranny of the Minority.”

Tom Paine contributes another interview, with a Jewish, conservative, Republican college student. Oy. She must be such a disappointment to her relatives in New York. (Kidding. Calm down. Kidding.)

I haven’t listened to it yet, but it’s in the usual place, and no, you don’t need an iPod or mp3 player to listen—you can listen to it via Windows Media Player on your computer.

I’ll probably post my essay later for those of you who don’t tune in.

Tinker and Harley teamed up to host the Carnival of the Cats this week, and sure enough, they’ve presented an excellent roundup for episode #133 this week.

Oh, and the catmodel of the week is…

Rafe can be found with Rhett at No Deep Thoughts, along with their crazy little brother Rico Loco.

If you participated in this week’s carnival and would like to add your cat to the catmodels directory, please send me a 4-by-3 JPEG photo of your cat and I’ll add them to the gallery. They may just win the catmodel of the week click-contest.

Also, if you’d like to host the Carnival of the Cats, let me know which week you’d like to host it.

The murder of Anna Politkovskaya - one of the most controversial Russian journalists echoed through most of the main media organs in the West. She was a thorn in the backside of the successive Russian governments who’s inept and genocidal treatment of Chechen rebellion she presented to the world in a harshest light.

Politkovskaya fell seriously ill with symptoms of food poisoning after drinking tea on a flight from Moscow to southern Russia during the school hostage crisis in Beslan in 2004, where many thought she was heading to mediate the crisis. Her colleagues had suggested the incident was an attempt on her life.

She was one of the few people to have entered the Moscow theater where Chechen militants took hundreds of hostages in October 2002 and tried to negotiate with the rebels.

“Anna was a hero to so many of us, and we’ll miss her personally, but we’ll also miss the information that she and only she was brave enough and dedicated enough to dig out and make public, and that’s a loss that I’m not sure can ever be replaced,” said Joel Simon, executive director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Politkovskaya’s death is the highest-profile killing of a journalist in Russia since they July 2004 slaying of Paul Klebnikov, editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine.

The mention of of Paul Klebnikov’s slaying is worthy of special attention: the MO was similar, with a gun left at the murder scene. It is obviously not a random murder. Even the authorities confirm that the murder is directly related to Politkovskaya’s professional activity, and there are indications that her ongoing investigation of the circumstances of the Nord-Ost tragedy was a contributing factor.

The ominous silence of the pro-government (or, rather, anti-Politkovskaya) Pravda and Izvestia the day after the murder is especially telling. At least for anyone who is familiar with the Russian establishment’s thunderous silences…

RIP

Update: For a much, much better post on the subject, go there.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews

Belgian far-rightist calls on Jews to join battle against Muslims

This is one of the Haaretz headlines today. Just a reminder:

Vlaams Belang is the right-wing Flemish party whose platform calls for getting tough with the Muslim population. It was outlawed in 2004 because of incitement to racism, and subsequently changed its name.

And here comes the party boss:

Dewinter himself, in a last-ditch effort to gain legitimacy, declared last week in the media that he is certain that “one-third of the Jews will vote for me.” The Jews, Dewinter told Haaretz, “are our brothers-in-arms in the battle against extremist Islam in Antwerp.”

Of course, the current anti-Israeli atmosphere in Belgium may provide enough reasons for the knee-jerk reaction of some Jews and cause them to vote for an obviously fascist party. But I would recommend these hasty Jews to take a second look:

According to Dewinter, “the Jews are part of European culture. Islam is not. It is foreign to the residents of the Continent and it threatens them.” An extremist Muslim, according to Dewinter, is anyone who refuses to send his daughter to a swimming pool attended by both men and women, who demands his wife wear a head scarf outside the home and opposes the inclusion of pork on the menu of public-school lunches.

Hmm… Must be a bit tough on a nice Orthodox Belgian Jew, eh? Take care, people…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews