The Geography of Hate

Recently, the BBC’s Panorama program did a 30 minute documentary on racism in Polish and Ukrainian football ahead of this summer’s Euro 2012 tournament to be hosted in the two nations.  You can watch the whole thing here. The obvious comment is that the things seen in that video are disgusting and the way Ukraine [...]

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This is brilliant:

One of the most welcome developments in recent years has been the emergence of what Philip Jenkins has called the next Christendom. Throughout the majority world and especially in sub-Saharan Africa, southeast Asia and South America, Christianity is booming.

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A military friend discusses war

A friend of mine currently stationed in Japan disagreed with some of the recent posts on torture and war, so we talked on Facebook and he wrote a post outlining some of his views. That post starts below the jump.

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How to make western journalism about Africa not suck

Excellent reading from Foreign Policy: Western reporting on Africa is often fraught with factual errors, incomplete analysis, and stereotyping that would not pass editorial muster in coverage of China, Pakistan, France, or Mexico. A journalist who printed blatantly offensive stereotypes about German politicians or violated ethical norms regarding protection of child-abuse victims in Ohio would [...]

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The GOP and Torture

This is pretty devastating: On Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the terrorist attacks in Washington, D.C., President George W. Bush sent a 12-page Memorandum of Notification to his National Security Council. That memorandum, we know now, authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to set up and run secret prisons. We still don’t know exactly what [...]

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Highlights from the French Election

Wouldn’t you love to hear our politicians talk like this? “Let me tell you who my rival is. It does not bear a name or have a face, it’s the finance industry. In the past twenty years, the financial industry has taken control of our societies, of our lives and threatens our states.”

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Messianic Nationalism, Amnesia and the GOP

Over at TAC, Daniel Larison defends Ross Douthat’s criticism of the Bush administration’s messianic nationalism.

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Teju Cole on the White Savior Industrial Complex

This is perfect. I’m going to quote at length below, but you must read the whole thing. But there’s a place in the political sphere for direct speech and, in the past few years in the U.S., there has been a chilling effect on a certain kind of direct speech pertaining to rights. The president [...]

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Top 10 Lessons from the Iraq War

If the current GOP primary has made anything clear, it’s that the mainstream of the GOP has learned absolutely nothing from the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rick Perry said we should go back to Iraq. Gingrich has a dubious history with neocons that means he’d be quite likely to go to war with Syria and Iran. [...]

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Kony 2012 @ Mere Orthodoxy

My friend Matthew Anderson invited me to write something about last week’s Kony 2012 brouhaha for Mere Orthodoxy. You can head on over there to give it a look. (UPDATE: It’s now gone live here.) Teaser below the jump:

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