Michael Moynihan at the Daily Beast ‘‘Whitewashing The Black Panthers’
‘A new PBS documentary tries to excuse a murderous and totalitarian cult.
When his captors uncinched the noose around his neck and shoved him into a wooden chair, Alex Rackley might have assumed his ordeal was over. He had already endured a flurry of kicks and punches, the repeated crack of a wooden truncheon, ritual humiliation, and a mock lynching. But it wasn’t over. It was about to get much, much worse.’
That party at Lenny’s is getting pretty awkward.
Full piece here.
‘. . and now, in the season of Radical Chic, the Black Panthers. That huge Panther there, the one Felicia is smiling her tango smile at, is Robert Bay, who just 41 hours ago was arrested in an altercation with the police, supposedly over a .38-caliber revolver that someone had, in a parked car in Queens at Northern Boulevard and 104th Street or some such unbelievable place, and taken to jail on a most unusual charge called “criminal facilitation.” And now he is out on bail and walking into Leonard and Felicia Bernstein’s 13-room penthouse duplex on Park Avenue. Harassment & Hassles, Guns & Pigs, Jail & Bail—they’re real, these Black Panthers. The very idea of them, these real revolutionaries, who actually put their lives on the line, runs through Lenny’s duplex like a rogue hormone.’
Perhaps not everyone’s going be mouthing Woody Guthrie lyrics, cheerfully working on shovel-ready bridges with perfectly equal health-care access, earnestly talking the latest neuroscience discoveries, impending climate doom and union gossip.
Then again, how about the Republican party? I believe I can see the orange crest of Trump’s hair passing through the bar area at Bay Club Villas, causing quite the commotion. I’m trying to care, knowing what so often is at stake.
I don’t think people are going to be particularly satisfied with our politics for a while, maybe at least a generation.
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Also, via Michael Moynihan via The NY Review Of Books: ‘The Mystery Of ISIS‘
‘Ahmad Fadhil was eighteen when his father died in 1984. Photographs suggest that he was relatively short, chubby, and wore large glass’es.
How Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi got where he was going. The anonymity of the author lends credibility.
How are the Turks and the Iranians influencing events?
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Even the NY Times notes that Western fighters heeding the jihadi call into Syria pose a risk upon return.
All that righteousness and fighting experience with nowhere to go.
Long but well done. Very likely worth your time.
Michael Moynihan jihad.com.
Repost: Kenan Malik In The Spiked Review Of Books: ‘Twenty Years On: Internalizing The Fatwa’-Salman Rushdie’Paul Berman At The New Republic: ‘From September 11 to the Arab Spring: Do Ideas Matter?’…From Foreign Affairs: ‘Al Qaeda After Attiyya’….From The AP: ‘Al-Awlaki: From Voice For Jihad To Al-Qaida Figure’From Slate: ‘In Aleppo, Syria, Mohamed Atta Thought He Could Build The Ideal Islamic City’…From The NY Times: Review Of Christopher Caldwell’s Book “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West”And: Philip Bobbitt Discusses His Book ‘Terror And Consent’ On Bloggingheads
