Essay of the Week: 4/26/09-5/2/09

This documentary from the Guardian is worth watching provided you keep two things in mind. The first is that the documentary is from the Guardian with all that implies. The second is that the journalist is captive to a Sunni perspective and he does not even realize it.

No Shia would talk about how nobody in pre-invasion Iraq paid any attention to sectarian divides. To be sure, Shia and Sunni served together in the Iraqi army. But Shia did not serve in the elites unites that kept Saddam in power. It seems that the narrator’s fond memories of his childhood Iraq in part reflects the fact that he had a privileged Sunni upbringing (This is conjecture on our part based on his biography).

Having said that, the Sunni view point is important for the future of Iraq. I doubt that any Sunni in Iraq is feeling optimistic now that the Iraqi government is going after Sunni militias that fought for the Americans and the Americans seem inclined to leave and let God sort the whole mess out.

If you want other views on the documentary, here is the comment section of Abu Muqawama talking about the piece.

Links for today

The end of the tax free internet. You knew it was going to happen.

People are rushing to make fun of Stardock’s latest problems. They claim it is all because Stardock does not use copy protection. You would think that no company that had copy protection had ever had problems getting its multiplayer support off the ground before.

Vinyl Flooring Linked to Autism. I am a bit dubious myself. I have seen just about everything linked to autism. When a problem has been increasing in prevalence (like Autism has been), it is easy to fall into the trap of mistaking correlation for a causation.

Spengler Outs Himself

In this article here, Spengler outs himself as David P. Goldman. That name has long been associated with Spengler, so this is not a huge shock to any one. Spengler might have been pushed into outing himself by this article here, but it seems that officially joining the staff of First Things had more to do with it. Scroll to the bottom of this article for First Things official announcement.