Literature and Politics

I only started this weblog in order to comment on Salam Pax's. Now here I am rambling on about literature. Most untypical. Over the last 3 years, I've just saved a couple of things under 'Lit' : one was Tolstoy's novel about the struggle with the Chechens; the other was The Ballard tradition (accessed 21 Sep 2003), which I never got round to reading.

Here are a few comments from various weblogs and forums.

On Chechnya here, here and here(these last 2 have an estimated life expectancy of 1 month).

On Putin's suggestion that the West wanted to destabilize the Transcaucasus, even John Kampfner thought this was Soviet-era conspiracy theory type thinking. He was one of the journalists who had a 3 3/4 hour session with Putin. There should be more on this in The New Statesman, 11 Sept (not free).

Loretta Napoleoni had an interesting article in The Times , 9 Sep (again, chargeable). See also Poisoned by Putin, Anna Politkovskaya, September 9, 2004.

Some more of my comments.

On The future of the left ---------- Sudan- the Black Book
also here

Hannah Arendt and the Jewish people

Venezuela and Chavez

'Integristes'"in Islam and Catholicism