Timothy Snyder is a Yale historian. I’ve reviewed his books “Bloodlands” and “Black Earth” about the holocaust here and elsewhere. Snyder isn’t Israeli and he isn’t Jewish. But I think the comments he posted today on his Substack blog “Thinking about” deserve reflection. Here are the money grafs: “In evaluating what Hamas has done, it […]
“The Bell: When Economic Distress Becomes Terrorism,” thebell.blogspot.com, “Tom Dinger” What has changed since February 24, 2010? Have things gotten any better since then or 911? Are we still looking at an economic sinkhole for many people? In the last two years, programs were put in place to rescue people in spite of politics. What […]
From the World Economic Forum: Kim Kardashian is an unlikely champion of statistics, but a tweet from the reality TV star in January 2017 contained a startling figure that has been named International Statistic of the Year. She shared a table showing a range of violent or unexpected ways people meet their deaths annually in […]
From a story in Daily Mail: Terror suspects including jihadis returning from fighting in Syria are to be offered taxpayer-funded homes, counselling and help finding jobs to stop them carrying out attacks in Britain. The top-secret Government strategy, codenamed Operation Constrain, could even allow fanatics to jump to the top of council house waiting lists. […]
From a story in The Globe and Mail The 22-year-old Mr. Abedi was identified Tuesday by Manchester police as the suspected bomber. British media reported that he was born in Manchester to parents who fled the violent repression of Moammar Gadhafi’s Libya. Little else is known about Mr. Abedi – British authorities have been tight-lipped […]
Reader Matthew McOsker sends a note pointing us to 2004 and reading for context: Who are the Boston Marathon terrorists? Some early reports state the men are Chechen. So where does Chechnya fit into global terrorism? I found the following piece that gives a nice summary: ” On September 1, 2004, a group of Chechen […]
Just listen to this and while you do, knowing this was recorded in a studio in Pakistan, by Pakistani’s try to jive that with “they hate us because…” and all that comment suggests. Dave Brubeck’s Take Five Here is the video about the orchestra. They actually work with Abbey Road Studio. 1500 concerts, 17 […]
by Bruce Webb I no longer try to follow Science-Fiction, but from 1964 to 1977 which is to say from the time I was seven until I turned twenty and joined the Navy I read pretty much everything and had built up a pretty massive library. Among them was a book called The_Shockwave_Rider by John […]
Even more than Digby on CalPERS, the one piece everyone should read today is Charlie Stross on International Travel. Since this is an economics blog, let’s pull a key section: Here’s the rub: security is a state of mind, not a procedure. Procedures can’t cope with attackers, because they’re inflexible. If you search passengers for […]
by: Divorced one like Bush So, we can’t bring the Gitmo crowd here because they are dangerous and would create an inviting situation for further terrorism, but we can take the suspected Northwest Airline man to a federal pen just outside of Detroit? A suspected terrorist, in a federal pen? What? Does the government really think […]