Farewell to this land’s cheerless marshes

Hemmed in like a blog between watches…

Body and Soul: Response to my post from last week. A few points of varying importance: a) A line that I meant as sardonic but not bitchy in fact turned out to be bitchy. Sorry!

b) The right definitely does need to get more serious about corporate abuses and collusion with vicious governments. That strikes me as probably the biggest blind spot on the right w/r/t human rights.

c) I’m not sure what the biggest blind spot on the left is–I don’t follow left-wing human rights work as closely as I do right-wing work–but population control (longer treatment here) is one contender.

d) Jeanne is drawing a much sharper line between funding Wahhabism and human rights abuses than I would. IMO if you fund the theory you are promoting the practice, and the specific brand of radical Islam funded and promoted by the Saudi government is adamantly opposed to human rights. So I do think articles tracking and exposing the money flow are human-rights articles.

Cronaca: Good Hapsburgs. Bad looters outside Baghdad. A possible break in the Baghdad museum looting mishegoss. Plus lots of other interesting stuff.

Kieran Healy: Plagiarism stories. There are some real doozies here–I expect the Old Oligarch will get a real kick out of these. My favorite so far (haven’t read all the way down yet) is the idiot who turned in the same paper to two professors… who just happened to be husband and wife. Best line so far is from Unfogged: “Does no one take pride in flunking anymore?” Link via Camassia.

Regions of Mind: Rebuilding the German army after WWII–interesting in its own right, doubly interesting in light of the current situation in Iraq.

Very neat–college kids pass out condensed versions of Love and Responsibility in order to counteract the lame, porn-culture messages of their campus’s “National Outdoor Intercourse Day” (?!). Via E-Pression.

Prison rape info links: here and here. I’m adding TalkLeft to the blogroll by the way, can’t think why I haven’t done that already.