He has played some outstanding innings in the past, and I've got no [sic] confidence whatsoever that he'll come back and play very well in the near future.
Andrew StraussTags: cricket 2010 england-cricket-team misspeaking alastair-cook
What we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as centres of critique. Since Margaret Thatcher, the role of academia has been to service the status quo, not challenge it in the name of justice, tradition, imagination, human welfare, the free play of the mind or alternative visions of the future. We will not change this simply by increasing state funding of the humanities as opposed to slashing it to nothing. We will change it by insisting that a critical reflection on human values and principles should be central to everything that goes on in universities, not just to the study of Rembrandt or Rimbaud.
Terry EagletonTags: imagination justice academia tradition arthur-rimbaud radicalism university humanities 2010 tuition-fees-uk 2010-uk-student-protests margaret-thatcher public-university radical-politics reactionary-politics rembrandt
[W]hat possible purpose does this lashing-out serve? Will activists be shamed into recovering their previous enthusiasm? Will Republicans stop their vicious attacks because Obama is lashing out to his left? It was pure self-indulgence; even if he feels aggrieved, he has to judge his words by their usefulness, not by his desire to vent. This isn't about him.
Paul KrugmanTags: activism liberalism compromise barack-obama leftism 2010 republican-party-united-states bush-tax-cuts
A culture of secrecy is like the bad stench created by cat pee—it is very difficult to get rid of.
Pierre de VosTags: secrecy south-africa 2010 cat-pheromone
There is no way that the new WikiLeaks leaks don't leave Hillary Clinton holding the smoking gun. The time for her departure may come next week or next month, but sooner or later, the weakened and humiliated secretary of state will have to pay.
Jack ShaferTags: united-states spying 2010 hillary-clinton united-states-secretary-of-state us-department-of-state us-diplomatic-cables-leak wikileaks
These are tough times for state governments. Huge deficits loom almost everywhere, from California to New York, from New Jersey to Texas.
Wait—Texas? Wasn't Texas supposed to be thriving even as the rest of America suffered? Didn't its governor declare, during his re-election campaign, that 'we have billions in surplus'? Yes, it was, and yes, he did. But reality has now intruded, in the form of a deficit expected to run as high as $25 billion over the next two years.
And that reality has implications for the nation as a whole. For Texas is where the modern conservative theory of budgeting—the belief that you should never raise taxes under any circumstances, that you can always balance the budget by cutting wasteful spending—has been implemented most completely. If the theory can't make it there, it can't make it anywhere.
Tags: politics economics united-states new-york taxes california deficit-spending texas new-jersey 2010 2011 balanced-budget budgets economy-of-california economy-of-new-jersey economy-of-new-york economy-of-texas economy-of-the-united-states financial-crisis-of-2007-2011 governor-of-texas rick-perry state-governments-of-the-us texas-elections-2010 united-states-elections-2010
To permit this gross new revelation to fade, or be forgiven, would be to devalue our most essential standard of what constitutes the unpardonable. And for what? For the reputation of a man who turns out to be not even a Holocaust denier but a Holocaust affirmer. There has to be a moral limit, and either this has to be it or we must cease pretending to ourselves that we observe one.
Christopher HitchensTags: morality holocaust 2010 henry-kissinger nixon-library-and-museum the-holocaust-denial
The great cause of the new Republican intake is the reduction of the deficit but to anyone seeking evidence of sincere attempts at deficit-reduction the evidence is baffling.
The Republicans showed before Christmas that they would seek to reduce the deficit but not when it came to a matter of the tax breaks that had aggravated the deficit in the first place.
Now there's a date set for the abolition of Barack Obama's healthcare plan, parts of which only came into operation at the start of this month. The Republicans are out to destroy the plan. Or, more precisely, to pretend to destroy the plan in the name of making good on election pledges. The measure won't get past the Senate.
But suppose it did get past the Senate, what effect would this have on the deficit? The answer is it would aggravate the deficit. Somehow, somewhere, there's an override mechanism that makes destroying Obamacare more important than destroying the deficit. If only one could figure out how it works.
Tags: politics united-states christmas barack-obama 2010 united-states-senate republican-party-united-states bush-tax-cuts 2011 united-states-elections-2010 healthcare-reform healthcare-reform-in-the-us presidency-of-barack-obama united-states-public-debt
Here was a temporary solution. Parole would get Mofokeng and Mokoena out of jail as quickly as possible. Other details could be sorted out later. I accompanied Nyambi to Kroonstad jail at the end of October and remember that as he told Mofokeng and Mokoena the news—that they would be home for Christmas—smiles slowly but surely transformed the sombre, cautious expressions on their faces.
Big problem: it was discovered in December, a full two months after the judgment was made, that the court order does not mention the NCCS at all. Consequently, the NCCS interpreted the court's order as having removed the NCCS's jurisdiction to deal with any "lifers" sentenced pre-1994. The members of the NCCS packed their briefcases and went home.
No one knows why the judgment didn't mention the NCCS; maybe the judge who wrote it, Justice Bess Nkabinde, simply didn't know how the parole system operates; but eight of her fellow judges, the best in the land, found with her.
The Mofokeng and Mokoena families, who are from 'the poorest of the poor', as the ANC likes to say, are distraught.
But the rest—the law men, the politicians and the government ministers—well, quite frankly, they don't seem to give a fig. Zuma has gone on holiday, to host his famous annual Christmas party for children. Mapisa-Nqakula has also gone on holiday. Mofokeng and Mokoena remain where they were put 17 years ago, despite not having committed any crime.
Tags: politics prison christmas crime human-rights south-africa 2010 african-national-congress jacob-zuma bess-nkabinde false-imprisonment human-rights-in-south-africa life-imprisonment nosiviwe-mapisa-nqakula parole prisons-in-south-africa
The Labour party on the whole has not been a very effective opposition since the election, partly because it spent months and months electing its new leader. I think the Labour party should, for one thing, stress much more that for most people in the past 13 years, the period was not one of collapse into chaos but actually one where the situation improved, and particularly in areas such as schools, hospitals and a variety of other cultural achievements—so the idea that somehow or other it all needs to be taken down and ground into the dust is not valid. I think we need to defend what most people think basically needs defending and that is the provision of some form of welfare from the cradle to the grave.
Eric J. HobsbawmTags: schools culture leftism welfare hospitals 2010 1990s labour-party-uk welfare-state 2011 2000s 2010s ed-miliband uk-general-election-2010
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