by Henry Farrell on January 19, 2005
A few quick links from around the blogosphere as I gear up to start teaching again …
“Scott McLemee”:http://www.prospect.org/web/view-print.ww?id=9051 in _TAP_ on teenage crushes and Susan Sontag.
“Kevin Drum”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_01/005480.php professes puzzlement about why Bush has been flogging the dead horse of social security; “Mark Schmitt”:http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2005/01/bill_thomas_giv.html provides a plausible reason why.
“Brad DeLong”:http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000178.html on the “Salvador Option”:
bq. To claim that American officers calling for a “Salvador option” are unaware that they are calling for Death Squads is as incredible as claiming that Plantagenets calling for a “Canterbury option” are unaware of murder in the cathedral.
Finally, the BlogPAC sets up its “There Is No Crisis”:http://www.thereisnocrisis.com/ website (via “Matt Yglesias”:http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/01/only_try_to_see.html). And a good thing too. A few weeks ago, Matt, Mark Schmitt and I had a good conversation about the need to build some sort of organization around the intellectual energy of the left blogosphere’s discussion of Social Security. This is a great start.
by Chris Bertram on January 19, 2005
The Goethe Institute has “a really nice animated site”:http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/pro/ring/splashgerman.htm on Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. It is aimed at children, but it should appeal to anyone with an interest in the Ring. (English and German). There’s also much more on the Institute’s various web-projects “on this page”:http://www.goethe.de/dll/mat/fsl/prj/deindex.htm .
by Chris Bertram on January 19, 2005
I’m about to start teaching a new course on global justice. The course starts by looking at some general theoretical issues around justice and then moves on to look at some recent attempts to extend thinking about justice to the global sphere. I’m also going to accompany this with a blog which will basically be an opportunity to point to relevant stuff elsewhere on the web as well as being a course noticeboard. The reading list is “here”:http://eis.bris.ac.uk/%7Eplcdib/tj.html and the blog (currently empty) is “here”:http://rousseau.typepad.com/globaljustice/ .
by Chris Bertram on January 19, 2005
Juan Cole “is arguing”:http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/third-baath-coup-if-as-i-have-argued.html that the Iraqi “resistance” is mainly composed of Baathist forces and that they have
bq. been systematically killing members of the new political class. This is visible at the provincial level. The governors of Diyala and Baghdad provinces have recently been killed. The killing and kidnapping of members of the provincial governing councils go virtually unremarked in the US press but are legion. A female member of the Salahuddin GC was kidnapped and killed recently. The police chiefs of many cities have been killed or kidnapped, or members of their family have, such that many more have just resigned, often along with dozens of their men. The US is powerless to stop this campaign of assassination.
This campaign also targets Iraqi trade unionists, and that’s why I’ve signed “the open letter circulated by Labour Friends of Iraq”:http://www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk/archives/000167.html to protest against the silence of Britain’s Stop the War Coalition in the face of events like the torture and murder of Hadi Saleh, International Officer of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions on January 4. If you would also like to sign the open letter, contact info@labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk.