#tis

Global warming is real. It is happening today. It is being charted by our satellites. It is being charted by our scientists. It is being charted by those of us in this body, and I think the real key is if we are ready to admit that fact and take the action to make the necessary conversion. ↗

— Dianne Feinstein

#admit #being #body #charted #conversion

And thus to my final and most melancholy point: a great number of Stalin's enforcers and henchmen in Eastern Europe were Jews. And not just a great number, but a great proportion. The proportion was especially high in the secret police and 'security' departments, where no doubt revenge played its own part, as did the ideological attachment to Communism that was so strong among internationally minded Jews at that period: Jews like David Szmulevski. There were reasonably strong indigenous Communist forces in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, but in Hungary and Poland the Communists were a small minority and knew it, were dependent on the Red Army and aware of the fact, and were disproportionately Jewish and widely detested for that reason. Many of the penal labor camps constructed by the Nazis were later used as holding pens for German deportees by the Communists, and some of those who ran these grim places were Jewish. Nobody from Israel or the diaspora who goes to the East of Europe on a family-history fishing-trip should be unaware of the chance that they will find out both much less and much more than the package-tour had promised them. It's easy to say, with Albert Camus, 'neither victims nor executioners.' But real history is more pitiless even than you had been told it was. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#camus #communism #czechoslovakia #david-szmulevski #east-germany

I have inherited two of the most important brands in hip-hop, Def Jam and Roc-A-Fella. Reid and Universal Music Group have given me the opportunity to manage the companies I have contributed to my whole career. I feel this is a giant step for me and the entire artist community. ↗

— Jay-Z

#brands #career #community #companies #contributed

My decision to look seriously at elected office is grounded in a deep commitment to public service and my experience - both my own and that of my family - in finding just, practical, and bipartisan solutions to difficult challenges. ↗

— Joseph P. Kennedy III

#both #challenges #commitment #decision #deep

I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. ↗

— Pauline Kael

#artist #civilization #country #culture #follow

In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising. ↗

— Pauline Kael

#arts #critic #independent #information #only

It seems likely that many of the young who don't wait for others to call them artists, but simply announce that they are, don't have the patience to make art. ↗

— Pauline Kael

#art #artists #call #likely #make

The critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising. ↗

— Pauline Kael

#critic #independent #information #only #rest

We have all been empowered by the web: everyone with a keyboard can now effectively broadcast to a national audience. In a sense, it puts each of us on the same footing as the major media conglomerates, except for AOL, who now apparently own all our thoughts and teeth. ↗

— John Hodgman

#areas-of-my-expertise #author #daily-show #funny #john-hodgman

Every man judges his own happiness and satisfaction with life in terms of his possession or lack of possession of those things that he considers worthwhile and valuable. ↗

— Meir Kahane

#every #every man #happiness #his #judges