Lazy Blogging Redux

My laziness continues and so here are some links to good stuff by other people, more motivated than I:

Nosemonkey at Europhobia has some interesting (if worrying) thoughts on North Korea's claims that it has a nuclear weapon.

Elsewhere 'Lenin' has a post on Darfur in which he makes the case for supporting the rebels against the Khartoum government. I'm not entirely sure I agree with everything he says (I may return to this in the future), but the debate he seeks to ignite is an important one in light of the human cost of the conflict in the region (and elsewhere in the country where similar dynamics are at play).

Ward Churchill is an American author and activist. He has written at some length about the genocide of indigenous people in North America, the repression of political movements in the States and US imperialism. Many of his views are distinctly controversial. His important (albeit not flawless) essay Pacifism as Pathology, for instance, argues that pacifism is a counter-revolutionary movement which actually protects the status quo it ostensibly opposes. In recent weeks he has been the target of attacks from the right-wing over an essay he wrote in the aftermath of September 11th. Whatever you think of his views, this is a flagrant assault on academic freedom and may well mark the first salvo in an all out attack on dissident academics in the US. This being the case I urge you to sign this petition.