mango

One from the 2009 normblog archives, A Climate of Fear by guest blogger Sean Coleman.

Decades of walled-off obscurantism and unquestioned power had managed to disguise the fact that the Irish Catholic Church had been running what was, effectively, an archipelago of brutal prison camps across the country

YOLLAND: Who's confused? Are the people confused?
OWEN: And we're standardising those names as accurately and as sensitively as we can.
YOLLAND: Something is being eroded.

there are at least four different ways of reaching a figure based on the methods of, respectively, the US Department of Energy, BP, The Oil and Gas Daily (Texas) and Middle East Economic Survey (Cyprus)

- Fred Halliday (2005)

Wet Uluru, from the Mick Hartley archives. Stunning

summer '12 fresh easy re-up NYT social determinants of health in Mississippi, Persian linkages ...

Cox doesn’t know oak trees, but she knows how to talk to people. She knows when to ask if someone cannot afford insulin, or is not taking insulin, or is not keeping the insulin cold, or cannot keep the insulin cold because there is no electricity or refrigerator. Not having health insurance is a huge problem in Mississippi, but it isn’t the only one

Bhakti Shringarpure riffs from Concerning Violence, a new documentary on Fanon, by Göran Hugo Olsson. Quoting David Macey

In a sense, it is almost absurd to criticise Fanon for his advocacy of violence. He did not need to advocate it. The ALN was fighting a war and armies are not normally called upon to justify their violence. By 1961, the violence was everywhere. It had even seeped into the unconscious.

A schoolteacher "somewhere in Algeria" set his pupils, aged between 10 and 14, the essay topic “What would you do it you were invisible?” They all said that they would steal arms and kill the French soldiers.

The children of Algeria dreamed of violence, and two of Fanon’s young patients in Blida acted out those dreams. Our prosperous societies do not have nightmarish dreams of massacres in Sétif or Philippeville or torture in their schools. Algeria had been having those nightmares for over a century.

Tokers, table football, cabbies, as many places. A day in Goma archived

"the American public must be informed as to the record and objectives of Mr. Begin and his movement"

(h/t RS)

Creating and Destroying the Universe in Twenty-Nine Nights
by David Shulman

Last spring - new genetic complexity discovered in mosquitoes

'Sex workers' rights are just workers' rights'

Guy Walks Into a Bar

from her archive: Samia Errazzouki responds to Chomsky on Western Sahara and the 'Arab Spring'

How warming impacts the Andes: one example

I think mistersloane (Jim Hollands) is superb here on District 9

Stanley Kauffmann, reply by Joan Didion

'If Philip Roth Hates Women, Why Does He Want To Have Sex With Them, Hmmm?'

On Smarm