Etcetera

Addenda:

• Addendum to Isaac Hayes post: Martin M [Added: and listen to "Joy" at Some Velvet Blog]
  
• Addendum on the harassment of Lithuanian former partisans and rising tide of antisemitism in today's post-Soviet Lithuania: Jewish Currents
• Addendum to various Solzhenitsyn posts: Francis S (proof you don't have to be a Stalinist to dislike Aleksandr)
• Addendum to various Georgia posts: Harry B. Oh, and I notice that old Living Marxism hack and professional "contrarian" Brendan O'Neill is following the same red-brown alliance logic as the Ron Paulistas, having already defended Karadzic (actually, I'm not sure if O'Neill did, but his fellow Party members have). And on the Paulistas, Zionist Anti-Communist nails Justin Raimondo as a Putinist (along with the odious antisemite Carlos Latuff), but calls Raimondo a crypto-leftist, whereas I see him as a crypto-rightist...
  

Debates I've involved myself in, or posts where I've commented in the last week or so:

• Flesh is Grass: online discussion of antisemitism (on anti-racist law, the one-state solution, Comment is Free, and citizendium).
  
• Amused Cynicism: South Ossetia Round-up #4 (on Lithuania's harassment of Jewish anti-Nazi partisan "war criminals").
• The Exile: Victory seems complete in South Ossetia (on Georgian propoganda and the "the Israelis" conspiracy meme). Incidentally, or not so incidentally, it does seem that the Western press have rather exaggerated the scale of the Russian operation (e.g. claiming that Gori has been taken), and taken Georgian announcements at face value. This does not make Russia's actions righter (the aerial bombardment of Gori is bad enough), but it does disgrace the Western press.
  
• Freeborn John: Open Goal (on Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez).
• Sultan Knish: Liberalism threatens the rights of women and minorities (on excessive paranoia about Islam).
• HarpyMarx: Olympic level hypocrisy (on totalitarianism and authoritarianism).
  
• Modernity: Dehumanising (on Israel's expansionism).

A debate I almost joined, but decided against:

• The Daily (Maybe): Webby bloggy linky things (on boycotting Israel). A shockingly civilised discussion (so far).
  

Nothing to do with me:

• George Orwell is blogging. (Like Samuel Pepys before him.) Today (in 1938), George noted the blackberries are reddening. Yesterday, that the first the first Beauty of Bath apples arrived. In 2008, we get every fruit and vegetable in our supermarkets all year round, and we have none of Orwell's sense of connection with seasonal change. Plus, of course, our produce tastes terribly bland, and is killing the planet... Pepys, by the way, hasn't blogged today, but yesterday he wrote: "I to the Exchequer, about striking new tallys, and I find the Exchequer, by proclamation, removing to Nonesuch. —[Nonsuch Palace, near Epsom, where the Exchequer money was kept during the time of the plague.]" Obviously, financial crisis is not so 2008 after all (but endemic to capitalism). (Hat tip: Freeborn John.)

A blog I've neglected recently:

• Loads of good stuff at Contentious Centrist, such as: on Zizek's misanthropic mask, on Durban II, on the word "slave". Added: taling of Zizek, more here.