My proud Monday: 4 Big Think posts, 1 Whitney Houston reference, 1 Fletch reference
1) What Does Growing Up in Gaza Mean for Peace?
Knowing full well that I tee myself up for easy, Whitney-Houston-themed ridicule, I’m here to say that the children are our future, and that childhood in the Gaza Strip — a radicalized, blinkered, deprived existence, according to Lawrence Wright’s humane report for The New Yorker — bodes very badly for the future of peace.
2) Guinea Teeters: “What Will the World Do?”
Because government troops in Guinea massacred civilian protesters at about the same time as I started blogging for Big Think, I’ve committed myself to using this space to track events in that all-too-easily-forgotten piece of west Africa. A November 5 BBC radio report warns that the trauma of the massacre and ensuing sexual assaults could spin Guinea into tribalism and even civil war.
3) Hersh: Nuclear Mutiny in Pakistan?
One word haunts Seymour Hersh’s new investigative piece about the potentially shaky security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal: “mutiny.” As Hersh writes, “the Taliban overrunning Islamabad is not the only, or even the greatest, concern. The principal fear is mutiny—that extremists inside the Pakistani military might stage a coup, take control of some nuclear assets, or even divert a warhead.”
4) The Junk-Shop Pragmatism of Asymmetric Warfare
Like any mere bystander, I’m always at risk of getting etherized by the abstractions of war. So there was something compelling and arresting about hearing writer Mark Danner detail the junk-shop pragmatism that goes into making a roadside bomb and waging so-called “asymmetric warfare.”
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