So I’ve been feeling kind of off the last few days which has led to no blogging. Yesterday, I had two posts going, one on how a right wing columnist wrote how she has doubts about universal voting rights (you know, some people are too stupid to vote), and the other on how Christian Democrats in Alingsås, a small town in western Sweden, are protesting about the municipal art gallery showing American artist Andres Serrano’s “The history of sex” with the usual screams of “won’t somebody please think of the children!” (and “won’t somebody please think of the tax payers”).
But I couldn’t be bothered.
So instead, here are some links for you to read over the weekend:
NIMBY comes to China (Jeffrey N. Wassterstrom, the Nation):
On a new kind of protest in China, where the rapidly growing, and highly articulate, middle class is speaking out on local issues that they feel will impact their quality of life.
Beware the internet’s looming class divide (Johann Hari, the Independent):
Why we have to fight to keep the internet equally open for everyone.
The threat of population growth pales beside the greed of the rich (George Monbiot, AlterNet): To suggest that population growth is largely responsible for the ecological crisis is to blame the poor for the excesses of the rich.
Amnesty International: War crimes go unpunished in Guatemala
(For Swedish readers interested in learning more about Guatemala, you can read this (long) story that I wrote for Amnesty Press in December 2006, about the history of the conflict and about today’s “low-intensity peace” in Guatemala. (Yes, self-promotion.))
Somalia’s crisis continues in the shadow of Darfur (John Boonstra, UN Dispatch): according to a high-ranking UN official, Somalia has the world’s most pressing humanitarian crisis.
Two visions of democracy: a debate on liberalism and multiculturalism (Nadia Urbinati & Michael Walzer, Dissent Magazine): Who should the West support: moderate Islamists like Tariq Ramadan, or Islamic dissidents like Ayaan Hirsi Ali? Urbinati and Walzer weighs in on the debate.
(Btw, I’ve decided to make this link round-up a weekly exercise under the headline “Friday food for thought”, where I’ll collect some links to things that should be read and to events that are under-reported.)
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