Naimisha Forest

New York Times unsure about democracy

The New York Times editorializes on the Italian election: “Demagogues win as Europe’s populist tide sweeps Italy.”

Silvrback blog imageDemagogues?  In its modern pejorative sense, a demagogue is one who seeks power by exploiting the prejudices of the mob. But in the original 5th century BCE Greek usage a demagogue could also be simply . . .

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March 07, 2018

Red Wednesday

I first got an inkling that the Islamic Revolution will fail when I read about the popular Silvrback blog imageChaharshanbe Suri  - red or fiery Wednesday - festival in Iran.  Chaharshanbe Suri is on the eve of the last Wednesday before Nowruz, the Iranian new year, in March. People build bonfires in alleys and on street corners. They leap over the . . .

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March 03, 2018

The strange birth and death of "Fake News"

Do you wonder why you'd never heard about 'fake news' till late in the 2016 election campaign, when, suddenly, apparently overnight, the American big media pack took up the danger that 'fake news' poses for American democracy?

How did that happen? Here is a Ted Talk by investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson on the carefully . . .

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February 26, 2018

Nothing to beat a good (literary) Western, eh?

Jack Schaefer (1949).  “Shane

"He rode into our valley in the summer of '89. I was a kid then, barely topping the backboard of father's old chuckwagon. I was on the upper rail of our corral, soaking in the late afternoon sun, when I saw him far down the road where it swung into the valley from the open plain beyond."

. . .

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Posted in: fictionfilmusa

February 24, 2018

Votes for the Dead

In 500 words or less, explain why the following statement is either right or wrong, both right and wrong, or, perhaps, neither right nor wrong:

Silvrback blog image"I have never been able to understand where people got the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time...

. . .

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February 17, 2018

Egyptian Girl

 Dick Dale and the Del Tones: Misrlou

 

Wikipedia: ' "Misirlou" (Greek: Μισιρλού < Turkish: Mısırlı 'Egyptian'[1] < Arabic: مصر Miṣr 'Egypt') is a traditional song from the Eastern Mediterranean region. The earliest recordings of the song are a 1919 Egyptian composition . . .

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Posted in: culturemusic

February 15, 2018

'Is Donald Trump a threat to American democracy?'

Over at Bloggingheadstv, Glenn Loury spars with his old friend Harold Pollack on what threat if any Donald Trump poses for American democracy.

Loury is a professor of economics at Brown University. He was famed as a ‘black conservative’ in younger days but seems to have converged to independent centrist or center-right . . .

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February 14, 2018

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