And this weekend's reads (mostly Iraq, but not just)
Iraq, Syria, etc
Terry Glavin: A shifting world order, from Iraq to
Afghanistan
ottawacitizen.com - It’s quite the contrast:
ritual beheadings and jihadist firing squads erupting all across Iraq at the
same time that millions of voters in Afghanistan were calmly defying Taliban
suicide-bomb threats and queueing for a second-round runoff vote to replace
that ill-tempered old nabob, Hamid Karzai....
kyleorton1991.wordpress.com - I like Twitter; it has helped
me avoid wading through the news on what passes for British politics in order
to find the interesting stuff—you follow the right people, and the news comes
to you. But following last week’s meltdown
in Iraq that powerful faction of deranged people who use the platform
made themselves felt. Some were antisemitic but
there was also all-purpose crackpottedness that included calling for my
arrest for supporting terrorism. Among this garbage there was a serious
point: the anti-war forces were feeling a moment of vindication. Now that the
immediate crisis has passed, and, contrary to some extremely
alarming reports a week ago, it does not look as if Baghdad will fall
imminently, it seems like a good moment to revisit some of the questions that
have dogged us since American-led troops crossed into Iraq in March 2003 to
finally take the march into Baghdad they should have taken in 1991....
dianadarke.com - As submitted to The
Tablet, published 21 June 2014 “Abigail Frymann tries hard to present
both sides of the narrative in her feature interview (“The rebels want my
head”, 7 June) with Mother Agnes ...
Shared by James Bloodworth
leftfootforward.org - The scale of the tragedy
requires a much greater response than the callous and disinterested one shown
by the government With the unfolding drama in Iraq climbing to the top of the
news agenda, the...
Some
articles on ISIS’s Ba’athist allies:
Uneasy Alliance Gives
Insurgents an Edge in Iraq –
ISIS’s Secret Allies
Below the fold: Russia, the far right, British politics, the
white working class, and more….
Russia
Shared by Katie Fisher
interpretermag.com RT, also known as Russia Today (that’s not entirely accurate
anymore, but it’s a long story), is the English-language Russian media Goliath
which has a lot to boast about. A 2012 Pew Research poll found that RT had the most Youtube videos of any news agency on the planet.
The Kremlin-operated agency is now available to more than 86 million cable
subscribers in the United States alone, and boasts over 1 million Facebook
“likes,” adding to its more than one billion Youtube channel views and
more than one million Youtube subscribers. While it’s easy to dismiss the
channel as a propaganda outlet (it is) with no real credibility, the fact is
that it appeals to wide segments of the populace spanning both the East and the
West. In countries with democratic systems that are already bitterly divided
over politics and policy, influencing just a small part of the populace could
be enough to tip the scales and change the course of geopolitics....
The far right
soupyone.wordpress.com - Most literate adults (or at
least those with access to the Internet) would probably know to avoid the
opinions of David Duke. Duke, ex-Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux
Klan, convicted fraudster...
anotherangryvoice.blogspot.com - In this article I am going to
explain twelve things you should know about the extreme-right hate group called
Britain First....
Film, literature
and the revenge of history
AJ Adler Iraq and “Last Days in Vietnam”
sadredearth.com - At the Los Angeles Film
Festival I caught Rory Kennedy’s powerful and moving Last Days in Vietnam. If
you think you are familiar with the story of the botched and frantic – and
heroic – American...
Max Dunbar: Dictatorship of the Average
maxdunbar.wordpress.com - This place’ll be a paradise
tomorrow. And in every department there’ll be a supervisor with a sub-machine
gun. There’s a famous saying upon revolution, the origin of which I forget,
that goes somet...
Class, history and
British politics
fatmanonakeyboard.blogspot.com - Owen Jones takes on David
Cameron's assertion that Magna Carta is a good thing, by trotting out his own
list of good things. It is hard to read either without cringing. One historical
myth is replaced...
fatmanonakeyboard.blogspot.com - The white working class -
this is the latest object of political fascination. And so the cry goes up from
the left to listen to them on immigration, to reach out to UKIP voters, to
prove that you ...
More here. Including:
- Politics (far right and more)
- Society (antisemitism, Islam, Islamophobia, secularism, etc)
- Global (MENA etc)
Last week (Putin, Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, etc)
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