Friday’s Reading List
By Taylor Marvin
Raja Ravi Varma, “Shakuntala looking back to glimpse Dushyanta,” 1870. Via Wikipedia.
What I read this week:
On Venezuela: Protests swell as places to rally disappear, inter-opposition splits over tactics, some background on post-Chávez Venezuelan politics, and another backgrounder on #lasalida: “The student protests as currently formulated have little chance of developing a strong cross-class alliance.”
Among the conspiracy theorists in Kiev.
We don’t say “Slav” democracy is troubled in Ukraine, so why talk about “Arab” failures? The use of the Slavic people as a unit of international geography has declined in the last few decades, while the “Arab world” has not. I’d guess the overt non-ethnic self-definition advanced by the USSR contributed to this.
Peter Munson has another strong piece on the question of intervention in Syria.
From Wednesday, linkage covering political violence at PVG.
Smoke & Stir 
