The Arab Revolt of 2011

http://newleftreview.org/?view=2883&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nlr68

'The Arab revolt of 2011 belongs to a rare class of historical events: a concatenation of political upheavals, one detonating the other, across an entire region of the world. There have been only three prior instances—the Hispanic American Wars of Liberation that began in 1810 and ended in 1825; the European revolutions of 1848–49; and the fall of the regimes in the Soviet bloc, 1989–91. Each of these was historically specific to its time and place, as the chain of explosions in the Arab world will be. None lasted less than two years. 


Since the match was first lit in Tunisia this December, with the flames spreading to Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Oman, Jordan, Syria, no more than three months have passed; any prediction of its outcomes would be premature. The most radical of the trio of earlier upheavals ended in complete defeat by 1852. The other two triumphed, though the fruits of victory were often bitter: certainly, far from the hopes of a Bolívar or a Bohley. The ultimate fate of the Arab revolt could resemble either pattern. But it is just as likely to be sui generis.'

Is the world too big to fail? Contours of global order

Tomgram: Noam Chomsky, Who Owns the World? |

A wide-ranging talk; March.

A Remembrance of Times Past

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/opinion/12iht-edcohen12.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

'Sometimes decades pass and nothing happens; and then sometimes weeks pass and decades happen.'

Chalmers Johnson - by his wife

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175377/tomgram%3A_sheila_johnson%2C_%22chal%22/

"Chal was a formidable and -- I’m tempted to say -- driven man. After his death, I received a letter from a high school friend who said much the same thing.  'I always admired Chal’s ability to really focus in on an interest. I hate to use the word, but it bordered on zealotry. An example was his ‘passion’ for collecting streetcar and bus transfer slips. As I recall, they were colorful and contained a lot of information about the routes.'

I had to laugh when I read this, and I offer it as a piece of advice to parents who may have similarly focused kids: don’t worry if they’re memorizing baseball statistics. It may lead to something far more important."

Allen on Gates: Before Microsoft

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/05/paul-allen-201105


“Did you see that?” she said after he’d left. “He ate his chicken with a spoon. I have never in my life seen anyone eat chicken with a spoon.” When Bill was thinking hard about something, he paid no heed to social convention. Once, he offered Rita fashion advice—basically, to buy all your clothes in the same style and colors and save time by not having to match them. For Bill, that meant any sweater that went with tan slacks.

December 1972: Last man on the Moon

http://www.skyimagelab.com/apollo17-last-man.html

Blue Marble: Earth seen from Apollo 17

Commemorating space flight:  50 years after Yuri Gagarin went into space, in April 1961.  


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Marble