The following is an episode of the BBC series Exiles featuring Edward Said (h/t to Doug Tarnopol).
True costs of Iraq War whitewashed by fuzzy maths
This article appears in The National. (Also see my earlier article on the causes of the war)
‘So many’, wrote TS Eliot, reflecting on the waste land left by the First World War. “I had not thought death had undone so many.”
This notion is unlikely to cross the minds of those surveying the devastation left by the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The most frequently quoted fatality figure – about 115,000 Iraqis killed – is shocking. But compared to major conflicts of the past century, it is a relatively modest toll. The Battle of the Somme alone killed three times as many. More were killed by a single bomb dropped on Hiroshima during the Second World War.
Former British prime minster Tony Blair, and then-US vice president Dick Cheney, were perhaps conscious of this when they expressed “no regrets” on the 10th anniversary of the war last month.
That the perpetrators of an aggressive war should accept the lowest costs for their folly is unsurprising. What is less explicable is why so many supposed critics of the war are crediting the same estimate. Brown University’s Costs of War project and the Centre for American Progress’s Iraq War Ledger use it as their main source.
You can read the rest here.
Ruins of Empire with Pankaj Mishra
The Victorian period, often viewed in the West as a time of self-confident progress, was experienced by many Asians as a catastrophe. As the British gunned down the last heirs to the Mughal Empire, burned down the Summer Palace in Beijing, or humiliated the bankrupt rulers of the Ottoman Empire, it was clear that for Asia to recover, a vast intellectual effort would be required.
Pankaj Mishra, author of From the Ruins of Empire, explores the historical fallout of the end of the Qing, Ottoman and Mughal empires with historian and filmmaker Michael Wood. (See Pulse’s review of Mishra’s book)
An opposition divided
Pulse editor Robin Yassin-Kassab discusses Syria on Al Jazeera’s Inside Syria.
We look at the internal divisions inside the Syrian National Coalition as they wrestle for legitimacy. To understand the reasons behind internal divisions inside the Syrian opposition, Inside Syria with presenter Hazem Sika discusses with guests: Najib Ghadbian; a representative of the National Coalition of Revolution and Opposition Forces in the UN; Robin Yassin-Kassab, a novelist and commentator; and in Athens-Ohio, Amr al-Azm, a professor of Middle East history and anthropology at Shawnee State University.
A Subtle Shift
This was published in the National.
From the very start, some commentators convinced themselves that the Syrian popular revolution was plotted, funded and armed by the West. From Seamus Milne to John Pilger, from Glenn Greenwald to George Galloway, they described the West supplying oppositionist ‘jihadist elements.’ Former leftist icon Tariq Ali spoke on Russia Today of “Russia and China resisting attempts by the West to take Syria over.” Russia is resupplying the Assad regime with the materiel with which to slaughter the Syrian people, making Ali’s performance on Russia’s satellite as unedifying, and as distant from reality, as that of a commentator telling Fox News that Palestinian resistance is simply an Iranian attempt to take over Israel.
These journalists have staked their positions against the evidence. They have done so by forcing Syrian realities, breaking the edges of these jigsaw pieces, to fit their prior geopolitical concerns (their opposition to concurrent Israeli-American and Saudi enmities towards Iran) or ideological stances (that, following Iraqi and Palestinian models, the West must always be the troublemaker in the Arab world).
But Syria is neither Palestine nor Iraq; Syrian events are moved primarily by internal dynamics – namely the violence of the regime and the agency of the rising Syrian people. The conspiratorial leftist perspective misses this, first by vastly overestimating Western influence on current events (a failure to accurately diagnose the historical moment) and, secondly, by misunderstanding how unenthusiastic the West is for any rapid democratic or revolutionary change in Syria.
Paulo Freire Interview: Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Paulo Freire’s last public interview, given to Literacy.org in 1996. Freire is most famous for his work The Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
Agony in Aleppo: a city abandoned by the world?
From Channel 4: In the first of a Channel 4 News series charting Syria’s descent in the face of civil war, German filmmaker Marcel Mettelsiefen’s spends several weeks in Aleppo witnessing a civilian population isolated and under siege. (Caution: contains highly distressing scenes of war including images of children who have been wounded and killed)
Al Khatib: victory for Syrian revolution will break chain of oppression for all Arabs
A very fine speech at the Arab League summit by Syrian opposition leader Moaz al Khatib, which ends with a call to all the gathered Arabs to release their detainees and end oppression and injustice. (English subtitles included)
In the Name of God the Most Merciful…
God’s peace and blessings be upon you all. This blessing comes from a people one quarter of whose population are now homeless, one hundred thousand are imprisoned. They have paid a heavy price for the freedom they seek, with over 100,000 martyrs and a destroyed infrastructure, at the hands of a savage oppressor.Peace and blessings upon you, from a people who are being slaughtered under the watchful eye of the world for two years, and have been bombarded with a variety of heavy weapons and ballistic missiles, while many governments continue to shake their heads and wonder what they should do.
Peace and blessings upon you, from the only people in the world where warplanes bomb bakeries, and the dough is blended with the blood of children and women.
Peace and blessings upon you, from the widows and orphans, the tortured, the wounded and the disabled, the prisoners and the detainees, the refugees and displaced, the rebels and the fighters, and the martyrs that flutter around this wretched world.
Peace and blessings upon you, from a people who will follow the path to freedom, and who posses a will that can destabilize the greatest idol, and a love that fills the world with tranquility, warmth and compassion.
Tennessee, Papa, and the evolving idea of Manhood
Christopher Lydon is the worthiest personality to have graced American radio. His skills as a host are admired by every listener to Radio Open Source. But you’ll have to hear the following conversation to appreciate how even as a guest he has few equals. Our friendship was formed over our shared devotion for ideas of the late Tony Judt. But I’m happy to discover that we also have in common a deep love for Hemingway’s prose. Here is Chris discussing Hemingway and Tennessee Williams on Boston Public Radio with Jim Braude and Margery Egan. Don’t miss it because radio does not get any better than this
Cyprus: What the world’s media has missed
The Tax Justice Network‘s latest TaxCast is out. In this month’s show: the crisis in Cyprus and the risk tax havens pose to the global economy, a surprise earthquake for UK-affiliated tax havens and a frustrated corporate tax inspector speaks out on the corrupting of the tax system.
Now also available on iTunes: bit.ly/Y8UOfQ
Produced by @Naomi_Fowler
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