Seen Elsewhere 02/05/2011

• The New Fascism?

  "As a writer, I think Ali has a real gift for enlisting her provocative personal narrative to make a point. But I often find that very strength to be obscuring. Had I come up like her, I might well believe that "Islam is the new fascism." But is that really born out by the evidence? Can what (Ayaan Hirsi) Ali experienced in Kenya seriously be extrapolated to Malaysia? To Turkey? To Bangladesh?"

• A referendum in Wales: The Economist

  "IT’S not easy, on a cold day in Cardiff, to find people who know about the referendum on March 3rd, and even harder to find anyone who cares about it."

• When Irish eyes are crying: Vanity Fair

  "The Irish government and Irish banks are crawling with American investment bankers and Australian management consultants and faceless Euro-officials, referred to inside the Department of Finance simply as “the Germans.” Walk the streets at night and, through restaurant windows, you see important-looking men in suits, dining alone, studying important-looking papers. In some new and strange way Dublin is now an occupied city: Hanoi, circa 1950. “The problem with Ireland is that you’re not allowed to work with Irish people anymore,” I was told by an Irish property developer, who was finding it difficult to escape the hundreds of millions of euros in debt he owed."

• SNP's fiscal plans 'lack detail'

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.