Norms and practices. Bloggers have undermined the blogosphere. Bloggers do not link to each other as much as they used to. It’s a lot of work to look for good posts elsewhere, and most bloggers have become burnt out. Drezner and Farrell had a theory that even small potato bloggers would have their day in the sun, if they wrote something so great that it garnered the attention of the big guys. But the big guys are too burnt out to find the hidden gems. So, good stuff is being written all the time, and it isn’t bubbling to the top.

Many have stopped using blogrolls, which means less love spread around the blogosphere. The politics of who should be on a blogroll was too much of a pain, so bloggers just deleted the whole thing.

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Blogosphere 2.0: Why it ain’t what it u…

New radio station in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA):

The new station, set up by the FATA authorities, aims to counter several illegal stations run by the extremists who air anti-West and pro-Jihad propaganda and has raised a few eyebrows for breaking away from social norms in the region severely hit by the Taliban-led insurgency.

“We initially got a tough response and often resistance for having women. We had to air songs asked for by women under men’s names. But now situation is gradually easing out,” a station official said. “We’re glad to have become a harbinger for change that was awaited for long,” said another official.

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Al Arabiya: Female DJs modernize tribal …

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how come the ahl-e haqq/yarsan aren’t t…

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BBC Radio 4’s big boy John Humphrys has…

Concerns surfaced last year after JBS managers refused to let late-shift Somalis pray at sunset during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Workers walked off the job, and more than 100 were fired. Somali workers have since claimed ongoing issues with their Latino supervisors, Chavez said.

“They believe they were treated differently because they were Somalis,” he said.

(in parts of “middle america” the expulsion of illegal latinos has resulted in their replacement by somali refugees who have residency to work in slaughterhouses and such)

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Somali refugees take up new roots in Gre…

“Almost 100% of the time, we found that suspected terrorists turned out to be innocent civilians.”

(Via Sleeper Cell.)

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“Substance”: “Almost 100% of the tim…

This last point is the one that gnaws. Thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions in taxpayer funds have been expended to provide Iraqis the opportunity to live freely. And this despite the facts that (a) the U.S. interest in Iraqi democracy remains tenuous (our interest was the elimination of Saddam’s terror-mongering, weapons-proliferating regime), and (b) Americans were assured, when the nation-building enterprise commenced, that oil-rich Iraq would underwrite our sacrifices on its behalf. Yet, to be blunt, the Iraqis remain ingrates. That stubborn fact complicates everything.

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Iraqi ingrates: This last point is the o…

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In postmodernity, real life is often sel…

It would be nice to have such a well-attended teach-in on the Palestinian issue, however the US media seems to have graciously decided to practice the adab we Muslims demand of them and protect the Palestinians ‘privacy’ and not show any images of what actual happens to Palestinians. Palestinians everywhere and the entire Muslim world breathe a collective sigh of relief…

A note about the teach-in: Many of the attendees expressed solidarity with the Iranians over shared values to protect human rights, which some of us have said there is “great wisdom hikma” in resisting…

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Neda’s death inspires UC Irvine teach-i…

The outpouring of American public sympathy for Iranian demonstrators might never have occurred had cable news outlets not made the courageous decision to broadcast Neda’s killing vividly and repeatedly.

Yet when Palestinians employ direct action tactics to protest Israeli oppression, and when Israeli forces respond with wanton brutality, they are ignored by the US media, even when footage is already available through online sources.

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Max Blumenthal praises the “courageous …