Politics:
The New York Review of Books on the recent Gaza war and its fallout in the context of the history of Gaza.
One of the most striking elements in the murderous melodrama that ensued was the utter confusion in the Israeli leadership about what might constitute a credible war aim. Stopping the renewed missile fire from Gaza proved to be impossible, though Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system worked for the most part effectively. Only after Israel’s land operation in the inner periphery of Gaza got underway was the army able to seize upon the extensive tunnels, many crossing under the fence around the Strip and opening into Israeli territory, as a possible raison d’être for the whole campaign.
NY Review of Books: Gaza: The Murderous Melodrama, November 20, 2014
CSIS on US foreign policy and the tumultuous Middle East: "While there is widespread agreement that U.S. policy in the Middle East should be responsive to conditions on the ground, there is widespread concern that it has become wholly reactive—crisis-driven, unprincipled, and uncoordinated.", and The Atlantic with a map of the geography of terrorism (80 per cent of its fatalities occurred in just five countries).
On ISIS' strategy of beheading hostages:
ISIS doesn’t want to convince its detractors and enemies. It wants to command them, if not destroy them altogether. And its strategy for achieving this goal seems to be based on destroying their will through intimate killing. This, in part, is what the group’s staged beheadings are about: They subliminally communicate ISIS’s proficiency in the art of the intimate kill. And this terrifies many people, because they sense just how hard it is to do.
The Atlantic: ISIS and the Intimate Kill, November 17, 2014
The New Republic argues that the repeatedly disregarded ceasefire between the Ukraine and Russia doesn't deserve that name.
To say that NATO's latest announcement about Russian troops "pouring" into Ukraine signals the end of the ceasefire is to misunderstand this conflict. Ukraine has spent the past few months unravelling: the government is running out of support (and funding), oligarchs continue to defend their enclaves in the east like so many feudal princes, and the Ukrainian military, even as it "redeploys" troops to the east this week, is increasingly unable to stave off rebel attacks—that's why the ceasefire was agreed to in the first place.
New Republic: Now That Russia Has Invaded Ukraine Again, Let's Stop Pretending a Ceasefire Ever Existed, November 12, 2014
An excerpt from Shane Harris' @WAR: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex on the relationship between Silicon Valley and the security state.
The Atlantic with an early analysis of the US-China climate deal, and the communiqué of the G20 summit in Brisbane, focusing on global economic growth.
The New York Times on some of the disappointed hopes in Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar.
The Atlantic's CityLab on attempts to repurpose the US' unfinished desolate zombie suburbs into meaningful projects and communities.
Pop Culture:
A 1990 Paris Review interview with Margaret Atwood, a 2014 Rolling Stone interview with William Gibson.
This personal essay on being a fan of Sleater-Kinney and seeing them return after a nine-year-long hiatus resonated with me a lot.
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