Charles is misusing his wealth and status again, taking advantage of his privileged position to lay down the law on subjects he knows nothing about.

Des Turner, a Labour MP and member of the Commons science committee, said: “Prince Charles has got a way of getting things absolutely wrong.
It’s an entirely Luddite attitude to simply reject them out of hand. In some developing countries where for instance there is a problem with drought or salinity, if you can develop salt or drought-resistant crops there are great benefits.”

Oh well you see that would require thinking about specifics, and Charles doesn’t want to do that, he just wants to use his unearned unmerited authority to make sweeping unsupported evidence-free … Read the rest

Not exactly.

Of course, the novel will be published sooner or later. Writing about Muhammad has become the shortest cut to media attention in the west. And of course semi-employed young men and women from religious Muslim backgrounds will be out on the streets, shouting.

Women? No they won’t. You don’t see them out there much – which is not surprising, since in ‘religious Muslim’ countries they’re not always encouraged to join in, if you get my drift. But they also, quite possibly, have better sense. It tends to be the young men who work themselves into stupid frenzies about this kind of thing. Rage boy, remember? Rage girl not so much.

[E]ven very religious Muslims cannot ignore the

You know every now and then if you’re very good I give you a jolt from the Women’s Studies mailing list. I have one now, fresh in this morning. Someone wanting material for a course she’s going to teach.

the
course is a straight-up political science one on “democracy and
development,” but I’m looking to inject some feminism into it. I
think I’ve got some good stuff on the democracy side, but I’m looking
for:

1) articles on women’s/feminist engagement with “development” as a
discourse, or resistance to development projects
2) a film about the conflict between democracy and development–that
is, struggles against state-sponsored development projects that come
from democratic autonomous movements. Off the top of my head, I’m
thinking