Photograph courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user Muhammad Mahdi Karim.
When it comes to Israel and Gaza, I find it very hard to judge. Maybe this is because my judgment isn’t very good, or maybe it’s because judging well really is hard, and not enough people realize this.
Filed under: barackobama, hillaryclinton, jonathanbirch, middle east, middleeast, taliban, terrorism on January 26th, 2009 | No Comments »
I’m not going to say what I think about this week’s student “occupations” against Israel’s actions in Gaza, but I can’t resist dragging up this remark from a protester at the University of Sussex, quoted in The Guardian:
“The action has brought together socialists, Islamists and even students from the green movement who realise the detrimental [...]
Filed under: jonathanbirch on January 25th, 2009 | No Comments »
Hamas militants fired 200 rockets at Israeli communities, Israel reacted in the usual way, and at least 56 civilians have been killed. The cliché is that the response is “disproportionate” (examples here, here, here and here). You can call Israel’s response ineffectual, heavy-handed, counterproductive, short-sighted, demagogic, brutal, tragic, heartbreaking — but disproportionate? This ubiquity of [...]
Filed under: 9/11, jonathanbirch, middle east, middleeast, terrorism on December 29th, 2008 | 3 Comments »
…this guy would be dead by now. Of course, if Bush were Saddam, he’d never have tried his luck. But he knew his action would be interpreted as an act of political dissent — in a country where dissent is now allowed. He may serve a jail term, but it seems far more likely that [...]
Filed under: afghanistan, al qaeda, clarepoliticsnews, democracy, humanrights, ideas, iraq, jonathanbirch, society, uspolitics on December 15th, 2008 | No Comments »
The polls were right all along — America has elected Barack Obama, and proved itself not to be a hateful, bigoted nation. I hope anyone who secretly expected a racist “Bradley effect” to propel John McCain to the White House is now hanging their head in shame: McCain won an honest 47% and bowed out [...]
Filed under: barackobama, democracy, election2008, johnmccain, jonathanbirch, republican, uspolitics on November 5th, 2008 | No Comments »
Photograph courtesy of Flickr user 1flatworld.
For me, the story of the U.S. election run-in has not been the story of the inevitable march to power of Barack Obama. It’s been the story of how an immeasurably more experienced candidate — John McCain — has rendered himself unelectable with a solid month of cackhanded campaigning. When [...]
Filed under: election2008, johnmccain, jonathanbirch, uspolitics on October 28th, 2008 | No Comments »
Photograph courtesy of Flickr user shazam791.
Of all the bizarre and interesting features of the 2008 US presidential election, here’s one you may not have noticed: it’s the first time both tickets have been topped by a serving senator. It guarantees that America’s 44th president will be the third to assume the job from a Senate [...]
Filed under: barackobama, democracy, election2008, johnmccain, jonathanbirch, uspolitics on October 8th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Photograph courtesy of Army.mil
The 44th President of the United States will be a crisis president. But he won’t just have an economic disaster to deal with. He’ll also inherit twin military deployments in the region between Israel and India — an area we should perhaps think of as one massive region, one massive problem, but [...]
Filed under: afghanistan, barackobama, election2008, iraq, jonathanbirch, uspolitics on October 2nd, 2008 | No Comments »
Photograph courtesy of Flickr user ucumari.
The House of Representatives has rejected a $700bn bailout for stricken Wall Street banks. The cause? Primarily rebellious Republican congressmen, less than 50% of whom backed the Republican administration’s proposal. Why? Because they fear for their seats — approval ratings for the bill vary from 12% to 22%, depending on [...]
Filed under: election2008, jonathanbirch, uspolitics on September 30th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Who’d have thought it could be so complicated? Unisex toilets are everywhere these days, but Manchester seems to have a new innovation: unisex urinals. How liberal. The cause of tension is presumably that the urinals are a little bit exposed. Even men want privacy sometimes. The future can only be unisex cubicles. What a [...]
Filed under: culture, jonathanbirch, socialcohesion, society on September 30th, 2008 | No Comments »
