Wore a long coat for the first time this week. Winter is here, guys, are we all contented?
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Stephen Kinsella reminds us that the ‘nobody saw it coming’ meme is utterly wrong. Brendan Keenan doesn’t come out of this one too well; “we know what the Irish banks bad loans are, they’re going to be about one percent of their loan books…” Ouch. See video, there’s more.
Peter Stafford vents about the wheels on the bus.
Come Here to Me! is trying to trace details about the owner of a union card from 1918. Interesting post, that.
Michael O’Dotherty in bad journalism shocker. That man is an eejit of the lowest order. Scarlet for’em!
The Cold War, Operation Gladio and Ireland. Some little known history from one of the Cedars.
WORLD
EuroGoblin; Blair’s memoirs and Europe and Eurosceptic Bolshevism.
Greenslade; how the Koran-burning nutter became an international story.
The misreporting of Venezuela’s economic issues.
Brace yourself for the next big Wikileaks document release. Iraq, this time.
The Interpreter; the new emerging global food crisis.
Andrew McAfee: Gov 2.0 vs. the Beast of Bureaucracy.
If you read one thing all week, make it this post by the BBC’s Adam Curtis on the Pope, CIA, Iran, US and the myth of global terrorism constructed by a few misinformed ‘experts’.
By now Haig was not alone.
In July 1979 a conference was held in Jerusalem to discuss the phenomenon of “International Terrorism”. It was organised by a young Benjamin Netanyahu at the Jonathan Institute, named after his brother who had been killed by terrorists at Entebbe.
All sorts of people were there, including George Bush Snr, many Neoconservatives who would become influential in Bush Jnr’s adminsitration, and Prime Minister Begin.
But the agenda of the conference was shaped by a new breed of what would become known as “terror experts”. And all of them were convinced by the new theory that the KGB were running almost all terrorism around the world.
They were also great, and sometimes very weird, characters.
Brad DeLong blogs on a Washington Post embarrassment.
Okay, not just the Curtis piece, read this too; a day in the life of the [trapped] Chilean miners…
With basic needs such as food and sleeping quarters now fully organised, the men have also chosen to fill both bureaucratic and cultural positions. Victor Segovia is the group’s official biographer, penning daily accounts from day one in an effort to keep an ongoing log of the men’s predicament.
In a nation that produced the Nobel prize-winning poets Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda, it is only briefly surprising that the men named Victor Zamora as the group’s official poet. Zamora’s rhymed compositions are often one-page homages to the rescue team. Zamora’s combinations of hope, gratitude and humour are among the most-read messages from below. Even after multiple readings, the poems still brings tears to the eyes of Campusano, the nurse working topside: “When this first came up, I read it and got halfway through, I couldn’t.” Campusano’s eyes fill with tears. “It fills me with emotions … when I read it.”
That’s some nice journalism.
Also, Four Corners, Australia’s Panorama or Prime Time Investigates; ‘Overdose, The Next Financial Crisis’. Aired August 23rd 2010. See below.
OTHER
Sage Francis, ‘Conspiracy to Riot’ this is some SWP-left stuff, but appreciate it for the skilled wordsmithery.