Linkliste unbehandelter Themen

Politics: 

Center for American Progress on the cost of the Iraq War: the most relevant and shocking number "Between 96,037 and 104,7542" Iraqi civilian deaths.

Oh. "The Ministry of Defence believes the US may decide to fast-forward plans for targeted missile strikes at some key Iranian facilities. British officials say that if Washington presses ahead it will seek, and receive, UK military help for any mission, despite some deep reservations within the coalition government."

Jon Stewart recently interviewed Condoleezza Rice (who has just published a book) about the Iraq War and it was disheartening to see that she still seems to believe the "the ends justify the means" argument, even though the ends also unfortunately (and unintentionally) were the strengthening of Iran's position in the region.

Here's an interesting thought in an opinion piece on economic inequality in the US: "Europe has maintained much more economic equality but is struggling greatly with inclusiveness and discrimination, and is far less open to minorities than is the United States."

Things I will regret later: I predict that the Republican Presidential candidate will be Mitt Romney.  

Pop Culture: 

John Darnielle just released a new song.

I can't stop listening to this song. And I'm not the first person who feels reminded of Scout Niblett (not the voice, the music!) but in the best way possible. 

Mother Jones interviews the creators of Homeland (also about politics), which is becoming more and more interesting.  

We tried to put Carrie in the most awkward, uncomfortable position we could put her in. That puts the audience in the same position: You are violating someone's privacy. Without being doctrinaire, we're really trying to show what it means to watch somebody all the time. What are you learning, and are you learning anything that's relevant?

Paris Review interviews William Gibson about the process of writing and many other things. 

If you read the Victorians writing about themselves, they’re describing something that never existed. The Victorians didn’t think of themselves as sexually repressed, and they didn’t think of themselves as racist. They didn’t think of themselves as colonialists. They thought of themselves as the crown of creation.Of course, we might be Victorians, too. [...] 

The Bridge is a fable about counterculture, the kind of counterculture that may no longer be possible. There are no backwaters where things can breed—our connectivity is so high and so global that there are no more Seattles and no more Haight-Ashburys. We’ve arrived at a level of commodification that may have negated the concept of counterculture. I wanted to create a s­cenario in which I could depict something like that happening in the recognizably near future.