“The Art Snob can be recognized in the home by the quick look he gives the pictures on your walls, quick but penetrating, as though he were undressing them. This is followed either by complete and pained silence or a comment such as ‘That’s really a very pleasant little water color you have there.’”
Russell Lynes, Snobs: A Guidebook to Your Friends, Your Enemies, Your Colleagues and Yourself
Will the new wave of Middle East war movies paint a fair and balanced portrait of U.S. soldiers?
Will the new wave of Middle East war movies paint a fair and balanced portrait of U.S. soldiers?
German Govt: Crime by Immigrants Skyrocketed 50% Last Year. And it’s probably worse than they admit
Australian jihadists captured in Lebanon could be stripped of citizenship, Christopher Pyne says
Culture of Criminal Behaviours
Lebanese man arrested after crossing into northern Israel
Culture of Criminal Behaviours
Lebanese man arrested after crossing into northern Israel
Israel hints it was responsible for Damascus airport explosion
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Report: “Anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. surged more than one-third in 2016 and have jumped 86 percent in the first quarter of 2017, according to new data from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL
Australian police under fire for seizing funds from victims of money laundering
Obama’s $400,000 Wall Street speaking fee will undermine everything he believes in Vox This story seems to have touched a nerve with readers
We Could Understand Donald Trump Better Through Reading ‘Richard II’
Malta scandal exposes New Zealand trusts again
Eight Maps That Explain France’s Macron-Le Pen Election Bloomberg
We Could Understand Donald Trump Better Through Reading ‘Richard II’
Panama Papers: Malta scandal exposes NZ trusts again | afr.com
Malta scandal exposes New Zealand trusts again
Eight Maps That Explain France’s Macron-Le Pen Election Bloomberg
Melenchon asks supporters if they will back MacronPolitico
Landscape of Treason n+1. Before the first round of voting, but useful on the electorate.The trouble with Emmanuel Macron The Week
A New Political Reality for France Der SpiegelThe Macron Phenomenon JacobinBig Stakes in the French Presidential Election: Governance Versus the People Counterpunch. Pre-election, but an interesting portrait of Macron.
In medieval times, nobles believed a crowned and invested king had “two bodies” – one that was material and earthly, and one that was heavenly and bestowed by god. But “the character Richard II — like Trump — shows us how this agreement to live by a fiction can go wildly wrong. Richard does not realize that he is not really superhuman but that his subjects only grant him their willing suspension of disbelief if he plays the part he has been assigned.”
STUFF JUST GOT REAL: French Parties Unify Against Le Pen: ‘This Is Deadly Serious Now’.
Pieces like this one are trying to pass off centrist Emmanuel Macron as an outsider, but his centrism is what made him the French establishment’s preferred candidate-of-last-resort
The Atlantic Council Report, April 2017 – “No one can be complacent about geopolitical risks these days. The shocks and surprises of the past few years show how easily assumptions about liberal markets, international relations, conflict, and democracy can be shaken.
The Atlantic Council Report, April 2017 – “No one can be complacent about geopolitical risks these days. The shocks and surprises of the past few years show how easily assumptions about liberal markets, international relations, conflict, and democracy can be shaken.
Junk News and Bots during the French Presidential Election: What Are French Voters Sharing Over Twitter? COMPROP DATA MEMO 2017.3 / 22 April 2017 Philip N. Howard
Computational propaganda distributes large amounts of misinformation about politics and public policy over social media platforms. The combination of automation and propaganda can significantly impact public opinion during important policy debates, elections, and political crises. We collected Twitter data on bot activity and junk news using a set of hashtags related to the French Presidential Elections for a week in March 2017. Content about Macron tended to dominate the traffic on Twitter, but highly automated accounts occasionally generated large amounts of traffic about Hamon. These automated accounts generate a small amount of content about French politics, though this amount is increasing over time. Social media users in France shared many links to high quality political news and information, roughly at ratio of 2 links to professionally produced news for every link to other kinds of sources. In comparison to our study of similar trends in the US and Germany, we find that French users are sharing better quality information than what many US users shared, and almost as much quality news and information as German users share.”
Computational propaganda distributes large amounts of misinformation about politics and public policy over social media platforms. The combination of automation and propaganda can significantly impact public opinion during important policy debates, elections, and political crises. We collected Twitter data on bot activity and junk news using a set of hashtags related to the French Presidential Elections for a week in March 2017. Content about Macron tended to dominate the traffic on Twitter, but highly automated accounts occasionally generated large amounts of traffic about Hamon. These automated accounts generate a small amount of content about French politics, though this amount is increasing over time. Social media users in France shared many links to high quality political news and information, roughly at ratio of 2 links to professionally produced news for every link to other kinds of sources. In comparison to our study of similar trends in the US and Germany, we find that French users are sharing better quality information than what many US users shared, and almost as much quality news and information as German users share.”
- See also: AP – For the first time in modern French history, no mainstream party candidate is advancing, upending the country’s political system;