Links

There is probably a growing surplus on the Budding Statesman of 'link' posts. I do apologise for this, but I try to make 'links' a weekly instalment and sometimes there is little time to write more in - depth posts.

To make up for this, there are some super interesting links this week - possibly even the best yet:

1. "Lessons from the TV flat screen industry on why trade protectionism may ultimately undercut domestic industry anyway." Pointer from Chris Blattman.

2. Ageing populations do not necessarily result in economic stagnation (study).

3. When a Japanese doomsday cult purchased a remote sheep station in Western Australia in 1997. This same cult was later responsible for the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway.

4. Finding Australian law blogs. I've had real trouble finding active blogs that discuss Australian law, which is a real shame. From my impressions so far it is one of the more diverse and interesting blogospheres within the humanities domain. The majority of the ones I've found are listed on the side bar on the right, under the "Legal" section.

5. Really, really interesting review of Hannah Arendt's book "Eichmann in Jerusalem."

The Eichmann mentioned in the title is Adolf Eichmann, who organised the logistics of the Holocaust (i.e organising the transportation of Jews to trains and then on to concentration camps, etc.) After he escaped to Argentina after the end of WWII, the state of Israel discovered and kidnapped him and put him on trial in Jerusalem in 1960.

If you care to read, more information below the link.


The post is less a review and more a very through analysis and discussion of various topics, ranging from: 

• Eichmann's psychological profile
• the Nazi's early pre - war plans for the Jews
• the ways German - occupied nations did or didn't resist genocide demands
• discussion of why more Jews didn't protest.

Highly recommend this post. The post looks fairly long, and it is, but there is also extensive discussion in the comments.  One section (of many) that I found particularly relevant:

What eventually happened we all know too well. Other countries started closing their doors and refusing to accept Jewish refugees. Despite hearing this story a hundred times, the version in Eichmann in Jerusalem was new to me. I had always thought of countries as closing their gates to a few prescient people trying to flee Nazi Germany on their own, or to a few stragglers who managed to escape. The truth is on a much greater scale: the Nazis were willing to let every single Jew in Europe leave, they even had entire bureaucracies trying to make it happen – and the rest of the world wouldn’t cooperate. The blood on the hands of the people who wouldn’t let them in is not just that of a few escapees, but the entire six million.