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Wednesday, Feb 12, 2003

moving company

"Boyd and Blade's company, Berkeley Systems, was famous for its flying toaster screensavers. When the couple sold the company in 1997, they had 120 employees and $30 million in annual revenue. Boyd and Blades were catapulted into national prominence when they became disgusted with the Clinton impeachment process and created a website that tapped into a huge groundswell of opinion that wanted the country and particularly the Republicans to, as the name suggests, move on."

Tuesday, Feb 11, 2003

democracy when

"Even those suffering from justification fatigue ought to pay special attention to this one, because it goes beyond the category of reasons offered in support of a course of action that has already been decided upon and set in motion. Unlike the other justifications, it is both a reason for war and a plan for the future. It also cries out for elaboration. Democracy is a wonderful idea, but none of the countries in the Middle East, except Israel and Turkey, resemble anything that would look like a democracy to Americans. Some Middle Eastern countries are now and have always been ruled by monarchs. Some are under the control of an ethnic or religious group that represents a minority of the population. Saudi Arabia and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan are the world's only major nations named after a single family, and in Saudi Arabia the royal family functions as, in effect, the country's owner. Most Middle Eastern countries don't even make the pretense of having freely elected parliaments; in Iran, for example, candidates have to be approved by the mullahs. And the very problem that democracy in the Middle East is meant to solve�rising Islamic radicalism, encouraged or tolerated by governments that see it as a way to propitiate their increasingly poorer and younger populations�makes the prospect of elections dangerous, because anti-American Islamists might win."

what now

eric alterman interview at cal pundit

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