Edward W. Said was born in Jerusalem 76 years ago today. He is much missed. Read a remembrance of Edward by Akeel Bilgrami here.

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An amazing speech by a friend of ours here at 3QD, Michael D Higgins, who has just been elected president of Ireland in a rather incredible story of last minute political heroics and the like. Again, our congratulations to Michael and to the whole Higgins family (Alice Mary in particular). A frickin’ incredible story all around.

M Ilyas Khan at the BBC:

Aaloo Andey (potato and egg curry) is the first single from an underground band called the Bayghairat (Shameless) Brigade and the video has gone viral in Pakistan, with tens of thousands of hits on YouTube.

Its scathing lyrics take on taboo subjects such as Islamic fundamentalism and the Pakistani army chief in a way that no one has done before.

It also pours scorn on Pakistani society where ruthless killers – such as Mumtaz Qadri who killed a politician for his religious views and Ajmal Qasab the sole surviving gunman from the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks – are glorified as heroes by some.

This is a place, the song goes, where a Pakistani Nobel prize-winning physicist, Abdus Salam, is forgotten because he is from the minority, and much reviled, Ahmadi community.

Bayghairat Brigade are three young men with a sense of humour but also, clearly, with a sense of despair about Pakistan.

The potato and egg curry of the title is just a way of lamenting how Pakistani society dishes out the same old rubbish year after year.

But do the band members realise that they may have put their lives on the line?

More here. And here's the video:

Matthew Bieber in The Wheat and the Chaff:

Peter Singer is perhaps the world’s most influential philosopher and the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. In late August, I sat down with him to discuss his most recent book, The Life You Can Save.

At the outset of your recent book, The Life You Can Save, you lay out two goals: to challenge readers to think about their obligations to those trapped in extreme poverty, and to convince readers to choose to give more of their income to help the poor.

What do you mean by extreme poverty?

Well, when I talk about extreme poverty, I use the definition that the World Bank has, which is really based on people having enough income to meet their basic needs for food, shelter, and maybe to educate their children, or some very minimal, basic healthcare.

The World Bank has calculated that in order to do that, you need to have the purchasing power equivalent in your local currency of US $1.25. So, we’re really talking about people who have less than what you can buy for $1.25 in the United States. It’s not what you would get for US $1.25 if you went to a bank in Mozambique or Mauritania. It’s what would have the same purchasing power in those local currencies as $1.25 has in the United States, and that’s what you have to live on for a day. If you have less than that, the World Bank classifies you as being extremely poor.

More here.  And here’s the video: