So this is how Obama put it to Turkey: “At the end of World War I, Turkey could have succumbed to the foreign powers that were trying to claim its territory, or sought to restore an ancient empire. But Turkey chose a different future. You freed yourself from foreign control. And you founded a Republic that commands the respect of the United States and the wider world.There is a simple truth to this story: Turkey’s democracy is your own achievement. It was not forced upon you by any outside power, nor did it come without struggle and sacrifice. Like any democracy, Turkey draws strength from both the successes of the past, and from the efforts of each generation of Turks that makes new progress for your people.”

No mention of Turkey’s genocide of Armenians. No hint. No nod. Just a democracy emerging out of World War I. Great rewrite. Sure to make Turkish nationalists rake their pee with raki tonight.

• Class War 101
• Obama sweet-talks Islam in brutish Turkey
• Obama sidesteps Turkey’s genocide-denial
• Hitchens: Telling the truth about the Armenian genocide
• Egypt at war with democracy activists
• Obama’s double talk
• Michael Kinsley on life after newspapers
• In praise of the short story
• 2006 Lebanon-Israel war fires up US generals
• Big fat drunk sublime Handel
• Not just Slate, but economists, too, suck
• All you need to know about the Champions League Quarters

• Updikean couple in Egypt jailed
• What we’re fighting for in Afghanistan: spousal rape
• Michelle Obama’s organic garden calls down agribusiness wrath
• Photoshopping Michelle Obama
• Post-Christian America
• Newspapers have nothing to do with democracy 
• Footballer yellow-carded for farting

JimG reminds us of the importance of being fair to Beethoven. I couldn’t find the Pathetique, but Sundays are for odes to joy anyway.

• Right-wing worry-warts over Obama lynchings
• Why is Glenn Beck putting Obama in a nazi uniform?
• Unhinging at fox news
• Pfaff: America’s pointless, long war ahead
• Sex offenders’ Guantanamo
• The vanishing social security surplus
• Five things to do on your furlough
• So long, my boy
• Should Obama control the Internet?

The photograph has nothing to do with the musical bit, but I love them both, and one of them is my daughter at her latest concert, playing her latest trick. Speaking of which: does anyone remember this bit from the midpoint of the Reagan administration?

• Your Latest Trick

• The KKK is alive and burning crosses
• Why the border fence fails
• Piers Morgan’s Top-10 G-20 fantasies
• Is porn the new tobacco?
• Benny Morris on Palestine’s 1947-48 civil war

From the Labor Department: “Nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline sharply in March (-663,000), and the unemployment rate rose from 8.1 to 8.5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Since the recession began in December 2007, 5.1 million jobs have been lost, with almost two-thirds (3.3 million) of the decrease occurring in the last 5 months. In March, job losses were large and widespread across the major industry sectors.”

Also: “The change in total nonfarm employment for January was revised from -655,000 to -741,000, while the change for February remained -651,000. [...] The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) rose to 3.2 million over the month and has increased by about 1.9 million since the start of the recession in December 2007.”

Good thing, too. From The Times: “A jury ruled Thursday that Ward L. Churchill, a former University of Colorado professor who drew national attention for an essay in which he called some victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks “little Eichmanns,” was wrongfully terminated. The jury found that his political views were a “substantial or motivating” factor in his dismissal, and that the university had not shown that he would have been dismissed anyway.”

No surprise there. What Churchill said was ridiculous, and sensationally so, but no more, and in so many cases far less, ridiculous than the incendiary gabfest that fueled-up post-9/11 America under the guise of patriotic retribution and, horror of horrors, honor. The result are the actual atrocities of Iraq and Afghanistan we’ve had to endure, as opposed to the rhetorical idiocies of an otherwise respectable professor.

See my previous pieces on the matter:

• The Firing of Ward Churchill (July 2007)
• Dissent’s Enemies, Freedom’s Cheats (Feb. 2005)

• Twitter Switch for Guardian, After 188 Years of Print
• Palestinian Terror in the West Bank
• When Even Bill Kristol Loves Obama’s Afghan Plan, Time to Worry
• The End of Christopher Dodd
• Alaska Senate Pukes on Palin Pick
• Eric Alterman Defends Pinch Sulzberger
• Is Samantha Power Overrated?
• On Thomas Carlyle
• Semi-World Cup Shocker: Bolivia 6, Argentina 1
• Trailer Trash: Hollywood Stars Unplugged

Quote of the day:  “We don’t issue instructions on not touching the queen.”–An unnamed Buckingham Palace official on what remains of the obnoxious idiocy known as monarchic protocol.

I was writing a couple of pieces on Peace Now, the beleaguered Israeli human rights group that got its start in the barf old days of the Begin years back when the Israeli military was on one of its periodic smashes over Lebanon (so the Netanyahu years shouldn’t be that different) when this mind-blowing piece by Bach came up on my shuffle (I tend to go heavy on Bach when I have to pound out a few thousand words in an evening). It’s just a prelude, nothing Genesis-worthy, and I’m not even sure what mind-blowing means other than something Quentin Tarrantino would go for (which I don’t), but i thought I’d share it with you all. It’s worth listening to a few times even if you’re not under the influence of arak, as I am.   There’s something insurgent here, defiantly assertive, as in: We may get stepped on, we may be treated like slaves, we may get fired, we may even lose our 401(k) matches (count me out: I was never suckered into that scam), but we’ll survive. Marie-Claire Alain is the organist.

• Bach’s Prelude in G Major, BWV 568 (Marie Claire Alain at the organ)

• How Pinch Sulzberger Demolished the New York Times
• How Vanity Fair Got it Wrong About Pinch
• Will Netanyahu Attack Iran?
• Taliban Says Talk Offer “Lunatic”
• Blowback: Taliban Threatens Attacks in US
• Krugman on Why Obama Is Wrong
• One More Boost for Sen. Franken
• Nicolas Sarkozy on How to Reinvent Capitalism
• I Feel Your Prostate
• 742,000 Jobs Lost in US in March (French)
• Ted Stevens Gets Away With It
• Why The Pope Is Stuck in the Middle Ages
• Iran & Syria Got Indirect US Nuclear Aid