Fontana Labs links to the wonderful commentary from Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, I love these guys.#

Zinn: After Gandalf falls, you get another view of the so-called terrorist Orcs. You know, the regrettable side of the Orcs does occasionally come out. The violence. It doesn't help their cause when these distinct, individual Orcs take it upon themselves to lash out at the inequality of the system. But notice that even these violent Orcs don't seem happy. They're not pleased with themselves. It's a violence borne of necessity.

Chomsky: Sure. They're trapped in a cycle of violence.

Zinn: And now we come to Galadriel's wood, Lothlorien. The film — inexcusably, in my view — leaves out a lot of the things that happen to Gimli in this sequence.

Chomsky: He's forced to wear a blindfold. He is not allowed to see the Elves. This is the apartheid system the Fellowship serves.

[...]

Chomsky: Picture, for a moment, the average Orc's life. Hunted, hated, sometimes murdered. I think Jared Diamond would be an interesting person to write about the effects of environment and geography on all this.

Zinn: On the Orcs?

Chomsky: On Orcish culture as a whole. Of course, one of the interesting points in Diamond's work is that you have hunter-gathering cultures, and you have farming cultures, developed societies. And these developed societies, these agricultural cultures, mobilize and create large armies, and hunter-gathering cultures are not actually very effective at mounting large armies.

Chip Gibbons discovers Frédéric Bastiat and comments on a single-payer health care system.#

Single payer is a blank check for health care providers as long who offer services that are approved by the government. The real cost is the lack of choice. A person with a particular disease, who is highly motivated to find a cure for it, is being forced to buy someone else's idea of health care, pay for treatments that he does not need, leaving him less money to search for the cure for his own disease, which in the end would benefit many others with the same disease.

Julie Leung explains why the Internet is saving her sanity.#

When we do get out, I find that my Internet relationships have given me new freedoms. The depth of dialogue I can have in emails and blogs satisfies my need for intense conversations. With young children running around, it can be difficult to finish a sentence. At first I was frustrated by this stage of life. I longed for energetic and intense interactions with my friends. I longed to speak - and listen - in paragraphs without being interrupted by trips to the potty. But now I've realized that I can have those discussions on-line, in a format where I can find time to concentrate and focus. Then I am able to enjoy the fresh aspects of in-person play time and to carpe diem, to seize all I can from the moment while I'm in it: being a mom with her children, making friends.

Chip Gibbons has an interesting discussion about what Condoleezza Rice should do with regards to her testimony about 9/11.#

MetaFilter posts a link to Gandhi versus bin Laden in the latest Prospect.#

It is presented as a series of letters from one to the other.

From the first letter by Osama.

I should make two additional points. First, our terror is reactive. We are only responding to the terrorist violence of the US. Americans rob us of our wealth and oil, attack our religion, trample upon our dignity, treat us as pawns in their global chess game, and have the moral impertinence to call us terrorists when we are only defending ourselves against their terrorism.

Second, I distinguish between "commendable" and "reprehensible" terrorism. Terrorism to abolish tyranny, external domination, corrupt rulers and traitors belongs to the first, and one that imposes or perpetuates these evils belongs to the second. My followers neither kill like cowards nor make personal gains from their actions. They give up the ordinary pleasures-careers, families, even their lives-and show by their self-sacrifice that they are guided by the highest of motives. Our terrorism is moral and religious, not criminal in nature as our western critics claim. Our consciences are clear, and I say to my fellow Muslims that to kill the Americans and their allies - civilians and military - is an individual duty for every Muslim.

From Gandhi:

You seem to believe that Islam is perfect. But all religions contain truths and errors. Moreover, you, Osama, claim to know the true principles of Islam better than anyone else, and brook no dissent. You rule out the creative adaptation of these principles to a world vastly different to the one in which they were first articulated. And by asking the Islamic state to impose them on its subjects, you deny the latter their basic religious freedom. This is the surest way to corrupt both your religion and the state and to arrest the moral and spiritual growth of your people. A truly religious person wants to live by the values and beliefs of his religion. If the state has to enforce them on him, then clearly his religion has ceased to have any meaning for him. A religiously based state is a sacrilege, an insult to God and to the human soul.

And also from Gandhi:

Even if you do not believe in non-violence, you should know by now that your methods have done an incalculable harm to your people: you have discredited a great religion. Millions now instinctively associate Islam with violence and destruction. You have also deeply divided the umma, subjected your followers to torture and degradation, and rendered miserable the lives of many innocent diaspora Muslims. You have given the Bush administration an excuse to unleash extensive violence and pursue a project of global assertiveness. It is time you grew out of your infantile obsession with death and destruction, abandoned your messianic zeal, and showed a bit of humility and good sense. But my religion forbids me to give up on any human being, not even on you.