Stay true to the dreams of thy youth

• Giles Fraser: St. Paul's canon resigns over Occupy London Stock Exchange evictions

  A top cleric at the famous St. Paul’s Cathedral in London resigned Thursday in support of the "Occupy" protests taking place in front of his church. Giles Fraser, the church’s canon chancellor, announced via Twitter that he was stepping down "with great regret and sadness." He had split with church leaders over demonstrators’ right to camp out in front of the cathedral as part of the Occupy London Stock Exchange protests, one of several offshoots of New York’s Occupy Wall Street protests that have sprung up around the world.

• There Are Only 2 Ways to Save the Economy: Innovation or Inflation - Michael Mandel - Business - The Atlantic

  In other words, we have to shift from a consumer economy to a production economy. This is partly about a change in spending patterns, but also about a change in attitude. For example, we need to boost R&D and other investment in knowledge capital, but we also need federal regulatory agencies to encourage rather than discourage innovation. We need more infrastructure spending and other investment in physical capital, but it should be directed towards supporting exports and production in the U.S., rather than clearing up bottlenecks of imported consumer goods. This profound shift in policy and behavior is essential over the long run, but it won't be easy or quick.

• Tahrir Square Meets Occupy Wall Street - Thanassis Cambanis - International - The Atlantic

  NEW YORK -- It was supposed to be a master class in revolutionary activism: two stars of the Tahrir Square uprising visiting Occupy Wall Street to swap tactics and sass. It ended up more like an undergraduate teach-in. For Egyptian activists Asmaa Mahfouz and Ahmed Maher, the visit to Zuccotti Park was an exhilarating -- if surreal -- break from the punishing workload of fighting the military dictatorship back home. "Where is the tear gas?" Maher asked with a smile, but he seemed genuinely puzzled by the cordial relations between the Wall Streeters and the cops.

• Qatar Discloses Ground Troop Involvement in Libyan Conflict - Arabianomics

  Via The Guardian: For the first time since the start of the conflict, Qatari officials have admitted to providing troops to the Libyan rebels in their fight against the Gaddafi regime.  Previously, only Qatar’s air force involvement was publicly disclosed.

• Soviet-style ‘Foreign Affairs’ stages ‘debate’ on Israel between ’2 senior Israeli officials’ and ‘liberal American Zionist’

  I wish this was a joke, but it's not. Here's a portion of an email promoting the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs. The actual articles are here.   The email promotion (emphasis mine): “The Problem is Palestinian Rejectionism” by Yosef Kuperwasser and Shalom Lipner and “Israel’s Bunker Mentality” by Ronald Krebs A heated debate over the source of Israel’s greatest threat, pitting two senior Israeli officials against a liberal American Zionist, as they lock horns over whether hard-line Palestinians or hard-line Israelis are to blame for the impasse in the peace process. Isn't this like 'pitting' a ram and a ewe?

• BBC News - Tunisia election: Partial results suggest Ennahda win

  Partial official results from Tunisia suggest victory for the moderate Islamist party Ennahda, in the first democratic elections prompted by the Arab Spring uprisings. The electoral commission said Ennahda was well ahead in the vote for a new assembly that will write a constitution and appoint a caretaker government.

• Saudi housing supply, demand gap narrows - Real Estate - ArabianBusiness.com

  The gap between housing demand and supply in Saudi Arabia is narrowing as banks start to lend and government support boosts sector development, the director of Jones Lang LaSalle in Saudi Arabia said on Tuesday.

• Jon Huntsman on Colbert Report: Chinese joke gaffe

  ut there was at least one noteworthy part of the back-and-forth that was left on the cutting room floor, ABC News reports. When the show played a stereotypical Chinese musical jingle, the former U.S. ambassador to China responded with a less-than-PC joke. "When’s the delivery food coming?" Huntsman quipped. After a groan from the crowd and an awkward silence, Colbert responded, "Did that go over well in Beijing?"

• The Man Who Knew Too Much - By David Rieff | Foreign Policy

  Qaddafi was, quite simply, a man who knew too much. Taken alive, he would have almost certainly have been handed over to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which had indicted him -- along with his son, Saif al-Islam, and brother-in-law and military intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi (whereabouts unknown) -- for crimes against humanity in late June. Imagine the stir he would have made in The Hague. There, along with any number of fantasies and false accusations, he would almost certainly have revealed the extent of his intimate relations with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the details of his government's collaboration with Western intelligence services in counterterrorism, with the European Union in limiting migration from Libyan shores, and in the granting of major contracts to big Western oil and construction firms.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.