Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
By Toby Matthiesen, New York Review of Books blog, June 12, 2013.
Synopsis: Pictures of Hezbollah militants standing amid the ruins of al-Qusayr, the former Syrian rebel stronghold, have offered dramatic evidence of the extent to which foreign Shia fighters are shifting the course of the Syrian war. But Bashar al-Assad is head of an ostensibly secular regime and many Shia think that Alawites are heretics. Why exactly is Hezbollah getting involved, and is this conflict really rooted in religion?
In a relatively short read, this really gets across the awesome complexity of this mess and also how it truly has the makings of a wider major Mideast war. I thought it was complex before, but I didn't really get how complex until I read this. Matthiesen is a scholar of, among other things, the Sayyida Zainab shrine area that is becoming a big focus point of the conflict.
(From the bio. blurb: His book Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn’t will be published by Stanford University Press in July 2013.)
Comments
I'll put this here as part of the same subject rather than as a new heading.
Why Obama is Declaring War on Syria
This is a very pessimistic article.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/06/14/why-obama-is-declaring-war-on-syria/
by A Guy Called LULU on Sat, 06/15/2013 - 11:01pm
The U.S. is leaving a detachment of F-16 fighter jets and and some Patriot missile systems in Jordan at Jordan's request, after military exercises end next week,
according to Michael Gordon & Thom Shanker @ the New York Times in .
U.S. to Keep Warplanes in Jordan, Pressing Syria June 15/16, 2013
They also say that
and that
Also that
and
There's also more on Kerry's efforts in Iraq, on the Egypt reaction, and a lot on the Russian's push back to U.S. efforts.
by artappraiser on Sun, 06/16/2013 - 1:35am