openDemocracy on Europe and migration in the light of the deaths in the Mediterranean.
Defense One talks to multidisciplinary experts about what we can learn so far about the future of war from the campaign against ISIS.
An Egyptian court has sentenced former President Morsi, who was ousted in a coup in 2013, to 20 years in prison for using force against protesters.
openDemocracy on how everyday gender inequalities are connected to gendered wartime atrocities.
The men and women who interact in wartime are full-fledged historical agents, socialised into norms and values that drive their behavior in wartime and peacetime. To understand what happens in war, why, how, and to whom, we need to critically consider institutions that govern social relations in peacetime. These institutions, which are all the more powerful for passing unrecognised as instruments of daily abuse, have been shaped historically through the interaction of global, regional, and local forces. Changing them is often harder than ending conflict, and change—when it occurs—brings conflict right into the most intimate domains of life.
openDemocracy: The everyday gender inequalities that underpin wartime atrocities, April 22, 2015A speculation on the one question that will decide the 2016 Presidential election in the US:
I’m going to put down a marker here. The next presidential election, like the last, will be decided by whether Democratic-leaning groups show up at the polls in large numbers—and maybe, at the margins, by whether the last few single percentage points of undecided voters choose “change” or “more of the same.” For those economically stressed toss-up voters—for the younger voters who sometimes show up and sometimes vote—the tipping point issue won’t be foreign policy. It won’t be ethics. It won’t be healthcare. It won’t even be the overall performance of the economy, which will be better, but still unwonderful. It will be that single haunting question, “Will I lose my insurance?”
The Atlantic: The Question That Will Decide the 2016 Election, April 22, 2015Meanwhile, Paul Krugman argues that the gulf between the two political parties means that personal traits of candidates are not important in the next election:
In any case, there has never been a time in American history when the alleged personal traits of candidates mattered less. As we head into 2016, each party is quite unified on major policy issues — and these unified positions are very far from each other. The huge, substantive gulf between the parties will be reflected in the policy positions of whomever they nominate, and will almost surely be reflected in the actual policies adopted by whoever wins.
NY Times: It Takes a Party, April 13, 2015
And The Atlantic on what the Left wants from Hillary Clinton, since Elizabeth Warren is not expected to run, and the New York Times on what it means to call her "polarizing", and Bloomberg View on the role that the question of inequality will play in the campaign.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, in The Atlantic, about the "Myth of Police Reform":
Police officers fight crime. Police officers are neither case-workers, nor teachers, nor mental-health professionals, nor drug counselors. One of the great hallmarks of the past forty years of American domestic policy is a broad disinterest in that difference. The problem of restoring police authority is not really a problem of police authority, but a problem of democratic authority. It is what happens when you decide to solve all your problems with a hammer. To ask, at this late date, why the police seem to have lost their minds is to ask why our hammers are so bad at installing air-conditioners. More it is to ignore the state of the house all around us. A reform that begins with the officer on the beat is not reform at all. It's avoidance. It's a continuance of the American preference for considering the actions of bad individuals, as opposed to the function and intention of systems.
The Atlantic: The Myth of Police Reform, April 15, 2015The Monthly with a portray of Julie Bishop, one of the two top contenders to succeed Tony Abbott.
Pop Culture:
Entertainment Weekly interviews Tatiana Maslany and creators John Fawcett and Graeme Manson on the Orphan Black season opener, and The New Yorker on the history (of science) behind the show.
America has a conversation with poet Saeed Jones.
Rolling Stone interviews John Darnielle.
