April 16, 2004

Madrid Bombers Attack Adopted Homeland (AP). AP - They were young, they were angry and they almost got caught. A highway patrolman stopped members of the Madrid bombing cell as they drove a stolen Volkswagen toward Spain's capital with a trunk full of dynamite a week before the train bombings. But all they got was a ticket. [Yahoo! News - World] 11:49:33 PM

Wal-Mart, a Nation Unto Itself. More than 250 sociologists, anthropologists, historians and other scholars met in Santa Barbara this week to examine the retailing behemoth for insights into American capitalism. By Steven Greenhouse. [New York Times: Business] 11:48:20 PM

Mike Silverman asks: "As long as we are handing states out..." Why do the Palestinians get to jump ahead of the Kurds? I was thinking about this, and the Kurds meet all of the qualifications to get a state. They are a cultural and national group with strong ties to the land on which they live. They've been persecuted mercilessly for a long time (much worse then the Palestinians, FWIW), and even better, they have quietly gone about building the institutions of statehood and a civil society pretty much on their own. So, if you want to talk about ethnic groups that deserve a state of their own, the Kurds ought to be at the top of anyone's list. read the rest. 1:52:23 PM