“Balloons emblazoned with an Olympic-style torch bobbed cheerfully in the sky above a swimming meet. For 12-year-old Adam Nairab and the other children on the beach, they provided inspiration. The balloons meant there was more to life than drones, explosions and the threat of sudden death.”
To hear more, visit The New York Times
“By an accident of history, the Chilcot inquiry on the Iraq War is appearing at a critical moment in British history. The war was the first great test this century of the ability of the British powers-that-be to govern intelligently and successfully and one which they demonstrably failed. The crisis provoked by the vote to leave the European Union is the next crisis of similar gravity faced by these same powers and, once again, they appear unable to cope.”
To hear more, visit The Independent
“Journalist Paul Mason discusses capitalism, Middle East correspondent Patrick Cockburn explores ISIS, and Laura asks what’s missing from the LGBT Pride celebrations. A new way of living is in the process of formation. Capitalism as we know it has reached the limits of its ability to adapt. A networked Alternative is already in the works- You can see it in the cooperative businesses on the rise and the tough time traditional parties are having keeping old hierarchies in place. There’s no more exciting or important story to report on – says Paul Mason economics editor at Channel Four News in the UK. Paul joined us often from the frontlines of the anti–austerity rebellions in Europe and the Middle East after the financial crash of 2008. Now he’s out with a new book: Postcapitalism: A guide to our future. Also in this episode: ISIS has been sustaining defeats across Iraq and Syria in recent months, but that doesn’t mean that peace is looming. In part that’s because the Middle East’s wars are as much about politics as about military prowess. Long time Middle East correspondent Patrick Cockburn, author of a new book Chaos and Caliphate, Jihadis and the West in the Struggle for the Middle East discusses the latest news on ISIS.”
To hear more, visit The Laura Flanders Show
“As Patrick Cockburn points out today, we have entered “an age of disintegration.” And he should know. There may be no Western reporter who has covered the grim dawn of that age in the Greater Middle East and North Africa — from Afghanistan to Iraq, Syria to Libya — more fully or movingly than he has over this last decade and a half. His latest book, Chaos & Caliphate: Jihadis and the West in the Struggle for the Middle East, gives a vivid taste of his reporting and of a world that is at present cracking under the pressure of the conflicts he has witnessed. And imagine that so much of this began, at the bargain-basement cost of a mere $400,000 to $500,000, with 19 (mainly Saudi) fanatics, and a few hijacked airliners. Osama bin Laden must be smiling in his watery grave.”
To hear more, visit Tom Dispatch
“War reporting is easy to do but very difficult to do really well. There is great demand for a reporter’s output during the fighting because it is melodramatic and appeals to readers and viewers. This is what I used to label in my own mind as “twixt shot and shell” reporting and there is nothing wrong with it. The first newspapers were published during the Dutch Wars with Spain, the Thirty Years War and the English Civil War at the beginning of the 17th century. People rightly want to know the latest news about momentous and interesting events such as wars, natural calamities and crime.”
To hear more, visit International Policy Digest
“The Syrian civil war has led to a regular stream of misjudgments, resulting in widespread confusion and ignorance. Charles Glass’s slim, truthful and updated version of Syria Burning, originally published in 2015, is a perfect antidote to the lack of clarity by this seasoned reporter even if his analysis and reportage is also tinged with frustration.”
To hear more, visit History News Network.
“Isis will benefit from the slaughter carried out by Omar Mateen in Orlando regardless of how far it was involved in the massacre. It will do so because Isis has always committed very public atrocities which dominate the news agenda, spread fear and show its strength and defiance.”
To hear more, visit The Independent.
“Patrick Cockburn, one of the best commentators and most knowledgeable commentators, has correctly pointed out that what he calls the Wahhibisation of Sunni Islam, the spread of Saudi extremist Wahhabi doctrine over Sunni Islam, the Sunni world, is one of the real disasters of modern—of the modern era. It’s a source of not only funding for extremist radical Islam and the jihadi outgrowths of it, but also, doctrinally, mosques, clerics and so on, schools, you know, madrassas, where you study just Qur’an, is spreading all over the huge Sunni areas from Saudi influence. And it continues.”
To read more, visit Democracy Now!.
“Patrick Cockburn has provided an invaluable account of the manner in which a quasi medieval reaction is sweeping across the Middle East and adjoining areas and the misguided policies of the West. His book should be read and studied by anyone seeking to understand events in the region and hopefully to campaign for more progressive policies.”
To read more, visit Spokesman Books.
“Looking for the good guys in Syria, the moderates…has generally been an act of fantasy.”
To read more, visit The Nation Podcast.
The best hope for an end to the killing in Syria is for the US and Russia to push both sides in the conflict to agree to a ceasefire in which each holds the territory it currently controls. In a civil war of such savagery, diplomacy with any ambition to determine who holds power in future will founder because both sides believe they can still win. Mutual hatred is too great for any long-term deal on sharing power. A ceasefire would have to be policed on the ground by a UN observer force. I recall the much-maligned UN Supervision Mission in Syria in 2012 arranging a ceasefire in the hardcore rebel town of Douma on the outskirts of Damascus. It did not stop all the shooting but many Syrians lived who would otherwise have died.
To read more, visit Truthdig.
“I came across Christian persecution over the years. I didn’t put it together as a pan-Middle East issue until I was in Egypt during the Arab Spring, when it became clear that there was an ideology at work, that there was an idea behind Christian persecution.”
To read more, visit Christian Solidarity International.
“Our guest today, Patrick Cockburn’s new book Chaos and Caliphate: Jihadis and the West in the Struggle for the Middle East, proves the opposite: that a collection of old clippings, or as Cockburn himself describes it, “a contemporary diary drawing on my notes, diaries and writings produced between 2001 and 2015,” can combine the virtues of daily reporting and persistent study and reflection into a gripping account and penetrating analysis of one of the most significant slices of the history of our times.”
To read more, visit Dave Marash.
“The first striking thing about this book is that the author
survived long enough to write it. Cockburn has spent nearly
20 years years, mostly in the Middle East, reporting in
countries where one of the few things the warring parties
agree on is that Western journalists are probably spooks, and
are thus worth killing.”
To read more, visit Lobster Magazine.
There is as yet no sign of counter-revolution or even effective armed resistance against a movement that has mercilessly crushed all opponents. Those living within ISIS territory who hate and fear it have reacted by fleeing rather than resisting.
The self-declared caliphate is too well rooted to disappear. Its slogan, “The Islamic State remains, the Islamic State expands,” is still true.
To read more, visit Newsweek.
“Chaos and Caliphate is an excellent book which looks at the region from a brilliantly unique angle. For the most part, Cockburn really takes advantage of his personal experience and expresses it in such a gripping way that it is hard to put the book down. As a guide to what has been going on in Iraq, with Daesh and in Afghanistan it is almost perfect…”
To read more, visit Middle East Monitor.
“The one thing we can be completely certain of about the War on Terror is that it has failed. After 9/11, Al – Qaeda was made up of a few hundreds or very low thousands of people in a few camps in Afghanistan and on the North West frontier of Pakistan. Now similar organisations control an area bigger than great Britain in Syria and Iraq and a large chunk of South Coast of Yemen, about 250 miles in fact, the distance from Edinburgh to London. They control sections of Libya and they are a growing force in Central Damascus as well as important areas in Africa. They are becoming a real threat as we know in Europe. This book was partly written in the hope that the West will develop a more realistic foreign policy, but I am not optimistic.”
To read more, visit Counterfire.
“It is with some relief that one can turn to the contributions of practising artists to The Gulf: High Culture/Hard Labor, where the general theme is art as resistance. However naïve they may seem, these are documentations of painful contemporary life. And no one could fail to laugh at Pablo Helguera’s cartoon where two exhausted travellers are crawling through the desert and one says to the other: “At the very least there ought to be a Guggenheim nearby.”
To read more, visit The Art Newspaper.
“My composure is restored with Patrick Cockburn’s disturbing account of what is going on in Baghdad. Cockburn is one of the greatest British foreign correspondents of all time – a must-read. He will fortunately remain with the new internet-only Independent.”
To read more, visit The Conversation.
“War also, in Afghanistan, when you see it on television – big explosions, flames, wrecked buildings -it’s very difficult to know if this is typical or not…the melodrama of war tends to take over, and that dominates everything else for a period.”
To hear more, visit BBC Radio 4.
Is Hillary Clinton likely to pursue an enlightened foreign policy with regard to jihadism?
Not much sign of it. She was for invasion of Iraq in 2003, intervention in Libya in 2011 and Syria in 2013. These are very much the actions of the foreign policy establishment in Washington that hasn’t learned or forgotten anything for the last quarter century.
To read more, visit Big Issue North.
