- Syria agrees
to allow a UN team of experts access to the site of last week’s alleged chemical weapons attacks. US government officials says it’s too little, too late. - The Tunisian opposition is back in the streets and is again calling for the government’s resignation. FP’s James Traub remains optimistic.
- Saturday was the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. The Atlantic examines why it’s so hard to find a copy of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech online, and The American Prospect has an excellent piece on the socialist roots of Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph, and the original March. John Lewis, the sole surviving speaker from 1963, called for the defense of voting rights in an address on the Mall on Saturday.
- Journalist Armin Rosen’s account of a week in airports is the best thing you’ll read today … or possibly this week.
- The big story in development circles this week was the high-profile coverage of cash transfers to the poor in the New York Times and on This American Life. But do “no strings attached” handouts work? Chris Blattman parses the mixed evidence for cash transfers on his blog, and there’s a sunnier assessment in coverage of recent research from Esther Duflo and coauthors.
- In other cash transfer news, a Foreign Affairs piece by Larry Diamond popularizes the CGD’s idea of direct redistribution of oil revenues as a solution to the resource curse.
- Facebook wants to bring the internet to the developing world, where the cost of data packages — not the absence of smart phones — is the major obstacle.
- Moving on to counterinsurgency, a proliferation of local vigilante groups may be the next step in Nigeria, where Islamist group Boko Haram and government counterinsurgency forces have killed over 8000 since May 2011.
- In case you missed earlier coverage of Nick Turse’s Kill Anything that Moves, Tyler Cowen links to a great review of what sounds like a damning exposé of American war practice in Vietnam.
- Finally, Slate covers a “tedious” video game that I can see being mentioned on a lot of fall syllabi.
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