Why is it that I find better political links when I read through literary sites than when I go to political blogs?

“If I want to be remembered for anything it’s for introducing a different way of thinking about the world, whether it’s about war, about human rights, about equality…And that the power ultimately rests in the people themselves.” — Howard Zinn at Big Think. (via Book Bench)

Financial Times: “Global super-rich no longer look so benign.” Hey FT, I’m glad you came around, but when were the rich benign, again? (via Bookforum)

Remember how the FBI said they figured out who killed all those people with anthrax? Well, it turns out they just drove an innocent man to suicide. (via Bookslut)

Omar Hammami was brought up Southern Baptist in Alabama. When he was a teenager he liked Shakespeare and Kurt Cobain. He’s now a leader in the Jihadist movement Shabab in Somalia. (via The Morning News)

The U.S. has stopped airlifting Haitian medical patients because of “an apparent dispute over where seriously injured patients should be taken for treatment.”

by Terese Svoboda

Nurse Ratched faced us—okay, let her remain nameless, this American CARE official with the power to educate the quarter million Somalian refugees trapped in Dadaab, the largest and oldest camp in the world. …more

A Review of Matthew Eck’s The Farther Shore

“The war is now a story. How will it get told?” - William T. Vollmann …more

Somalian rapper K’naan: “Where rocket-propelled grenades are fired around you on a daily … a guy bragging on TV talking about how gangster he is?” K’Naan says. “For us, it’s more a source of entertainment. It’s more like a comedy or something we watch. Say, ‘Oh wow, that’s kind of cute of American gangsters.’ But it isn’t hardcore, it isn’t that bad. Let’s get things in perspective, you know?” …more from NPR