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Monday, Dec 03, 2001

west of the atlantic

atlantic monthly unearths four perspectives on new york city from their voluminous annals.

[link]


df world

gore (vidal) on gore (election)
(laurence) tribe on (military) tribunals
(jon lee) anderson on surrender (in kunduz)
(nytimes) mag on (wes) anderson

[link]


powder keg

"The dry powder used in the anthrax attacks is virtually indistinguishable in critical technical respects from that produced by the United States military before it shut down its biowarfare program, according to federal scientists and a report prepared for a military contractor."

[link]


Sunday, Dec 02, 2001

pound foolish

"The policy of using political Islam as an anti-Communist tool was a crucial reason why so much of the Muslim world came to be dominated by stagnant, undemocratic but stable (so it seemed) and adequately pro-Western governments, on one hand, and the traditional forces of political Islam, reconfigured for the latter half of the 20th century, on the other. The crowning achievement of such a policy was the defeat of the modernizing alternative: those movements that hoped to avoid aligning with either the Soviet Union or the United States; to develop their societies along secular lines by, ideally, ever more democratic means; and to substitute nationalism for colonial humility and Islamic traditionalism."

[link]