OxBlog

# Posted 10:30 AM by Patrick Belton

ROUND-UP: With Rachel having decided to erect a Mexican death shrine next to the sofa for my cold, laid out with lillies and various British cold ailment remedies, blogging at least holds out the possibility of making me feel slightly less like a 90 year-old Tamaulipeca woman waiting patiently for the angel of darkness.... (There's also something distinctly Indian in my shrine, too - most likely in the flowers - but I can't quite tease it out yet.)

Rob's suggesting the UN call on Sistani to crack down on Sadr, since Sistani seems to have deferred to it in the past. Meanwhile, Crooked Timber points out far-right tabloid speculation that Europe will become a province of Islam is utter demographic scaremongering, and touches on jurisdictional challenges in prosecuting spam.

Josh Kurlantzick points out that the internet has not been the death knell to authoritarianism that enthusiasts in the optimistic 1990s had hoped: the reasons why - principally the individual nature of web-surfing (but then again, what about such electronic political phenomena as blogging and meet-ups?), and the suppression of sites with political content (successfully "nailing jello to the wall," is his quote with regard to China). Still, in countries which unlike China and Singapore don't actively suppress independent electronic fora for political conversation, it sounds from this piece that there's likely a great deal of potential in spreading internet-mediated political technologies such as blogging and meet-ups to young populations that already frequent cybercafes, if only at present to download - merciless google troll coming - naked pictures of Brittney Spears and Paris Hilton kissing topless Osama Bin Laden while listening to free ringtones...

Christopher Hitchens points out, mercifully, that Iraq isn't Vietnam. Also in Slate, and equally mercifully, Lee Smith points out that Al-Jazeera's tendency of late toward conspiracy theories about the U.S. is unprofessional and silly. (Also awkward and silly is Bob Dylan in a bra, a phrase which is likely to win us substantially fewer google hits.)

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