The brink of war - overview and details
Defining imperialism today - what’s changed, and what hasn’t?
Almost singular these days, the Times media critic does a salient institutional self-criticism of a wayward reporter and the indulgence of top management in fostering a string of poorly sourced when not fabricated international news stories.
Turkey’s incursion into Syria has roiled the Middle East and NATO countries, demonstrating one key polarizing divide on both sides of the Mediterranean. As far as I can tell, that divide is between supporters of political Islam and its opponents.
As a bloody siege looms over Idlib, the U.S. is digging into the east, and conflict between Iran and Israel may put Syria in the crosshairs. Turkey will have to eventually withdraw from Syria; Israel will eventually have to come to terms with Iran...
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Torture is an excellent way to be trolled by a seasoned operative, with potentially disastrous consequences, as Iraq showed
While Michael Walzer's book on religious revivalism is acknowledged by the reviewers as a critical engagement and characteristically insightful, they also fault the author for wrongly diagnosing its effects and its prescription. In a link (below the review) Walzer replies, as do the reviewers.
The Turks don't want a Kurdish mini-state on their frontier any more than the Syrians want to lose territory to the Kurds (and neither do the Iranians, nor do the Russians want a Kurdish state on their border). And, Turkey is warming up to Russia and Iran in a bid to exit before a total rout of its proxies in Syria. Here Robert Fisk and Vijay Prashad present two nuanced perspectives.
Victor Grossman reports from Berlin on causes of the spate of violence striking Germany and across Europe. We need not look too far to find possible causes of such hatred or, frequently, of distorted despair. I think of what so many have gone through. War-torn home towns, shootings, explosions and bombings in their native Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, a terrifying flight to get away, to find some haven, where they can escape and perhaps even realize their hopes and wishes.
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