Half decents, internet warriors, black holes, media missionaries

First, a reminder of tomorrow's Half Decents gig. If you can't go, give some money anyway.

Also on Syria, this is important from Air Force Amazons: Over 23,000 civilians killed since the UK Parliament’s Syria vote. You should also spend time with the heart-breaking Syria's Forgotten Cities, documenting that "Syria is a country with many Kobanes".

Quite a few Western leftists still think Assad is some kind of anti-imperialist hero and that we need to "stop the war" against him. As it happens, fascist ex-leader Nick Griffin (who this week endorsed both UKIP and Putin's RT.com) is in Syria doing some PR for Assad, along with Polish far right MEP Korwin-Mikke (whose party is allied to UKIP in the European parliament). 

Soldiers of the internet: this by Max Dunbar is a brilliant review of Jeremy Duns' book on Edward Snowden and the new politics of (mis)information. 

Black holes and media missionaries: this excellent long read by Muhammad Idrees Ahmad also takes on the new politics of (mis)information specifically in relation to the Middle East, exposing the untruths and skewed narratives of Robert Fisk, Patrick Cockburn, Seymour Hersh and others.

Also exposing untruths and social media propoganda, Sci-Lo Green has a long post on tweeter Mo Ansar, trying to get at what he actually believes on the basis of his tweets.

We don't need another hero: Darren Redstar has a post on celebrity radicalism, primarily on Russell Brand. I might ask him if I can cross-post it here and so I can put in some paragraph breaks, because it's quite hard to read in its current state, but worth the effort.The three other best reads on Russell Brand are by Peter Risdon (actually about Brand and the wider hard and soft left), Nick Cohen and Padraig Reidy.

The hierophants of an alternate capitalism: this is a long but very good post by Tom Owolade on Glenn Greenwald and other examples of Western-centric faux-anti-imperialism.

The only Sunday papers you need: If you're not getting enough of these link round-ups from me, tune in to my Paper every Friday evening for more. And the Lefty Tosser's Weekly ("radical but reasonable) has an algorithm that means the stuff I tweet is in the headlines.