You better get your facts right. The people he is talking about are NOT Egyptians or Jordanians (however much the Israelis keep trying to make them so): they are stateless Palestinian refugees, um sorry, make that 'displaced persons' who the Egyptians and Jordanians most emphatically do not regard as being fellow citizens.

Which is the whole point.

And don't give the standard garbage Israeli talking point "well Israel absorbed all those Jews, the Arab countries should absorb the Palestinians." Why on earth should they? I know one bunch of dirty Arab Muslim looks much the same as another, but the fact is they aren't.

And yes, they ARE treated atrociously by their host countries. In Lebanon for example, they must reside in the camps, where they can build no permanent structures, so they are still living in tin shacks. On the other hand, Israel is complicit in their situation too: they are the only refugee population in the world that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees is explicitly forbidden to help and refer to third countries for resettlement; instead, as displaced persons, they are the responsibility of UNWRA. This state of affairs is because of US actions on the Security Council at Israel's behalf.

At this point, I pretty much think any "two-state solution" is pretty much out of the question. The scale of Israeli withdrawal and removal of settlers necessary to produce a viable state is pretty much impossible. And look at this map: http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/IMG/jpg/Palestineorientale-big.jpg (link at sig), I really don't think you could make a viable state out of that, or anything close to it.

So a one-state solution is pretty much inevitable, the only question is what kind of state?

1) An Israel operating what amounts to Apartheid, which is pretty much what we have now? Which will inevitably lead to:

2) An Israel that collapses in flame and ruin about a hundred years or so from now as it inevitably loses the demographic battle and all Western good will because of its actions and a faded memory of the Holocaust (a nuclear armed Israel at that, pretty scary thought, really).

3) Or an Israel-Palestine created before that, based on one man, one vote, and no more Jewish exceptionalism, and a Right of Return, if still in place, open to the Palestinian as well as the Jewish Diaspora.

Frankly, I don't see option 3 happening any time soon, although it is blindingly obvious that in the long-term it is the only possible peaceful solution.

Terrorists want to attack Kansas! This is hilarious:

http://tinyurl.com/oha4yx (full link at cig)

This YouTube originates with the good folks at http://preparemetrokc.org/.

When I first saw it, I thought it was parody. Nope, there really are people that think that way.

Now if I ever heard a case of whistling past the graveyard, this has got to be it in spades. No, Obama doesn't "have" to do anything, and no, Obama made it pretty clear during the campaign that he would be nothing less than an AIPAC zombie politician on their issues.

Now I might be somewhat perversely sustained by Obama's fairly poor track record on not following through on campaign promises, but this one, no, a bridge too far.

I imagine the meeting will be your usual circle jerk.

Mr. Kamiya, you are whistling past the graveyard.

I am putting this post up for the single purpose of having something to flag, and seeing what happens.

"...any more than we can claim that natural selection is responsible for the fact that microchips are getting smaller."

Well, if you view microchips as parasites evolving towards SkyNet, you are pretty wrong there. (Yes, I know, evolution is not directional.) There is most certainly selection involved in microchip evolution, and since the "environment" they "live" in is our use of them, damn straights there is natural selection involved.

"If sociobiology has yet to come up with a truly persuasive evolutionary explanation for homosexuality (and it really hasn't), then it's certainly not in a position to explain Shakespeare."

Well of course it hasn't, sociobiology isn't a science. On the other hand, actual science has come up with some pretty damn good evolutionary indicators for homosexuality. Here for the source research: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0002282; here and at sig for a layman's explanation: http://www.slate.com/id/2194232/

Like a lot of evolutionary story-telling, and damn but there is a lot out there, it is mostly all spandrels. If literary criticism could take anything away from evolutionary theory, the concept of spandrels would be the single best tool.

But fitting in with the general Greenwaldian theme of the utter worthlessness of mainstream media:

Why on earth is it that only GQ (freaking Gentlemen's Quarterly!) is carrying this story, on Rumsfeld putting a cover sheet on all his briefings to Bush with heroic pix and biblical quotes?

It is absolute insanity, and should be front and center of the news cycle, yet only a fashion mag for gay men covers it?

Warning, the slideshow does not work in Firefox, only in IE, alas. But what did you expect from a fashion mag?

http://men.style.com/gq/features/topsecret

I'm not even going to read much of the letters thread on this one; I am pretty sure what they will say.

What I want to get at is that The Wingnut is letting us down. We don't need to hear wingnut opinions on this or that, lord knows there is no shortage of platforms available for that. What Wingnut was supposed to do, was explain WHY our conservative brethren FEEL the way they do.

We're trying to reach out here, trying to grok the opposition.

All we are getting is the same GOP propaganda, and no idea at all of why they think this way. I gave it a month, but frankly, this column is a disappointment, and should probably be shut down.

Getting Salon a lot of page clicks though.