Friday’s Reading List
By Taylor Marvin
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, ‘Portrait of J. B. Belley, Deputy for Saint-Domingue,’ 1797. Via Wikimedia.
What I read this week:
Challenging the narrative of Latin America’s left vs. right framework, which Roberta S. Jacobson comments “attempts to sort the region’s governments by that dated rubric lead one down a confused path to contorted conclusions.” Greg Weeks agrees, noting that these labels “will persist because they offer very easy ways to show whether you approve or not of a given person/country and/or want to project a certain image of them.”
Why are the Obama administration’s political-appointee ambassadors so unqualified? (Via Graham Jenkins and Andrew Exum.)
Why did Vladimir Putin choose sub-tropical beach resort Sochi as the site of Russia’s first Winter Olympics?
What’s a responsible, progressive position on an Israeli settlements boycott? Matt Duss urges economic pressure on settlements as a road to the least-bad option of a two-state solution.
Smoke & Stir 
