Interviews with the senior leadership on both sides of the North-South border continue to show that neither side believes that a full-scale open war is in its interest. But, as history in Sudan and elsewhere has shown, just because politicians and generals believe that conflict is better avoided, doesnt mean that it can't break out in the near future. The longer the impasse lasts and the more the hardliners in Khartoum and Juba gain influence, the less likely it is that peace can be maintained.
#2
grom - Kuwait and a couple of the smaller Emirates seem to meet the criteria at the moment, but that's about it, even for Muslims with Muslim neighbors.
Invoking Einstein while beating the dead horse of apartheid.
How very collegiate.
A letter written in 1929 and a modern Jewish resident of Pretoria, who clearly was not the subject of an extensive interview. The columnist really knows how to pick his sources.
#2
quintessential elements of perpetual restitution.
According to Einstein's Relativity, as we go faster and faster into the future, restitution should either go to zero or infinity. I'm not sure which (but I do have an intuition).
#5
Funny how in the late 20's Einstein thought the two great semetic peoples could get along and a couple of then suddenly he's coming up with theories that helped the creation of the A-bomb. Perhaps he got a closer look at the attitudes of one of those two great semetic people who sided with the Nazis as fast as they could.
h/t Instapundit
I dont think that President Obama believes a word of his remarks about what the Supreme Court can or cannot do about any given piece of legislation. Attorney General Holder said as much today when he agreed that the Supremes are there specifically to protect against laws they consider unconstitutional. Holders not picking a fight with his boss.
Its not about that. Its about power. And freedom.
Power, because the president and his people think that, since they are smarter and better than the rest of us, anyone who tries to limit their power is bad, and has to be brought into line. Thus, the tough words of warning to any justice contemplating voting against Obamacare.
Freedom, because the accumulation of power in the hands of the executive branch comes at our expense, bit by bit and law by law, precisely as Alexis de Tocqueville feared.
As he said, The nature of despotic power in democratic ages is not to be fierce or cruel, but minute and meddling. Tocqueville described the new tyranny as an immense and tutelary power, and its task is to watch over us all, and regulate every aspect of our lives:
It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.
We will not be bludgeoned into submission; we will be seduced. He foresees the collapse of American democracy as the end result of two parallel developments that ultimately render us meekly subservient to an enlarged bureaucratic power: the corruption of our character, and the emergence of a vast welfare state that manages all the details of our lives. His words are precisely the ones that best describe our current crisis:
That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?
Much of what passes for this sort of behavior is for "our protection". Ben Franklin said that anyone who is willing to trade a little freedom for a little security will wind up with neither.
Much of the Constitutional justification for government intrustion into private affairs is through the "general welfare" clause. In my thinking, much of what is passed off as the "general welfare" is actually the "average welfare". There is a difference: in "the general welfare", EVERYONE benefits, while in "the average welfare", some are benefitted only at the expense of others. Note that to make this acceptable, advocates of "the average welfare" do not see governmental waste, inefficiency, and even GRAFT, on their or anyone's part, as downsides: as long as the amount of money in the total system remains the same, the "average welfare" is maintained and is not "bad", provided the target beneficiaries are somewhat better off. To them, the only way the "average welfare" could go down is if someone took the government subsidy, convered it to cash, and burned it.
The framers of the Constitution did not have "average welfare" in mind when they said "general welfare", mainly because of the Eminent domain clause requiring "just compensation" for any property taken by the Government, including intermediary transfers (See Kelo). Kelo established the right of government to take from some to give to others for a "public" purpose, but did not waive the "just compensation" requirement. When the government takes property or items, there is a bit of question as to the dollar value of the property taken, and usually it is the government that dictates the "value" of what was taken as "just compensation", but that does not apply to money, for the value of money taken is the exact amount taken.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
