World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

Victor Davis Hanson is a prominent military scholar (although one who provokes controversy often) and he has written a book review for the Times Literary Supplement on how weapons have changed war.  He looks at Saltpetre (an early necessary component of gunpowder), Napalm, and what he calls “post-human” weapons (robots, and other horrifying developments on the horizon).  Hanson shows the interaction of these weapons and the society that spawns them.  It is a highly interesting essay.

As many of you know, I have been trying to find the common links among all the protests we have been witnessing across the globe over the last three years.  One common theme is, of course, corruption in government.   But there doesn’t seem to be any overarching political thread to these protests–they are all locally based and don’t seem to be working in any self-conscious way together.  Chris Hedges is a well-known socialist who writes for the Nation and in an interview with The Real News, a self-avowedly leftist media outlet, gives a possible answer to the question.  You need to listen to the interview with a questioning mind, but I also think that you will find many of the issues he raises to be worth thinking about.