Recommend your longform reads

HOW THE ENVIRONMENTAL LAWYER WHO WON A MASSIVE JUDGMENT AGAINST CHEVRON LOST EVERYTHING
Steven Donziger won a multibillion-dollar judgment against Chevron in Ecuador. The company sued him in New York, and now he’s under house arrest.
https://theintercept.com/2020/01/29/chevron-ecuador-lawsuit-steven-donziger/

The developments that led to Donziger’s confinement were, like much of the epic legal battle he’s been engaged in for decades, highly unusual. The home confinement is his punishment for refusing a request to hand over his cellphone and computer, something that’s been asked of few other attorneys. To Donziger, who had already endured 19 days of depositions and given Chevron large portions of his case file, the request was beyond the pale, and he appealed it on the grounds that it would require him to violate his commitments to his clients. Still, Donziger said he’d turn over the devices if he lost the appeal. But even though the underlying case was civil, the federal court judge who has presided over the litigation between Chevron and Donziger since 2011, Lewis A. Kaplan, drafted criminal contempt charges against him.

In another legal peculiarity, in July, Kaplan appointed a private law firm to prosecute Donziger, after the Southern District of New York declined to do so — a move that is virtually unprecedented. And, as Donziger’s lawyer has pointed out, the firm Kaplan chose, Seward & Kissel, likely has ties to Chevron.

Making the case even more extraordinary, Kaplan bypassed the standard random assignment process and handpicked someone he knew well, U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska, to oversee the case being prosecuted by the firm he chose. It was Preska who sentenced Donziger to home detention and ordered the seizure of his passport, even though Donziger had appeared in court on hundreds of previous occasions.
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Today:
 
Inside the Fall of the CDC
How the world’s greatest public health organization was brought to its knees by a virus, the president and the capitulation of its own leaders, causing damage that could last much longer than the coronavirus.
 
In the middle of the 9th century in Cordoba, then the capital of Umayyad Spain/al-Andalus, close to fifty Christians were executed by the Muslim authorities for blasphemy and/or apostasy after deliberately appearing before a judge and declaring their faith and the falsehood of Muhammad/Islam. Here’s a piece on the ways in which this strange episode has been understood:

The Martyrs of Córdoba: Debates around a curious case of medieval martyrdom

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/hic3.12603
 
oneniltothearsenal said:
The Next Decade Could Be Even Worse
A historian believes he has discovered iron laws that predict the rise and fall of societies. He has bad news

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/can-history-predict-future/616993/
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Not sure there’s anything particularly groundbreaking there, despite the apparently novel methodological approach. The idea that elite competition produces conflict in societies is long established, and is usually a reliable guide to understanding instability, but there’s much it can’t explain. Also, while I’m sympathetic to the idea of cyclical history in a very broad sense, I’d be extremely skeptical of attempts to identify distinct chronological periods which can stand alone as units of analysis. The idea of 50 year cycles is forced - I’m sure I read a similar article a few years ago which argued for 40 year cycles or something, and was equally unconvincing. I feel like I read articles like this every few years. Periodization is something forced upon historians, but it’s arbitrary, determined by stuff like the availability of sources or the existence of two dramatic events which can neatly frame a book or article for brevity’s sake.
 
A thoughtful critique of how we think and talk about jihad, jihadism, etc. Certainly has me reconsidering some assumptions:

A Jihadism Anti-Primer

“The US national security state has for the past quarter-century been preoccupied with something it has called “jihadism.” From the aftermath of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan through the September 11, 2001 attacks to the rise of the self-declared Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, or ISIS, the specter of mobile Muslim multitudes wreaking global havoc has given rise to an equally vast body of commentary.

Nearly all of this work is empirically or conceptually flawed. There are many reasons for such shortcomings, foremost being sheer racism and Islamophobia, followed closely by an inability to think beyond the worldview of the national security state. But many critical challenges to discourses on jihadism, however necessary and salutary, have also unwittingly contributed to the stultifying nature of these debates.

What follows is an anti-primer of sorts on jihadism. Unlike innumerable works, it does not purport to tell readers everything they need to know about the different groups whose exotic names and acronyms animate excited “national security” debates. Instead it is an attempt to help readers think through this issue beyond the fashionable threat of the day, to clarify what is and is not known so far, and to better weigh the issues at stake.”

https://merip.org/2015/12/a-jihadism-anti-primer/
 
I'm recommending this:

The Internet of Beefs

The standard pattern of conflict on the IoB is depressingly predictable. A mook takes note of a casus belli in the news cycle (often created or co-opted by a knight, and referred to on the IoB as the outrage cycle), and heads over to their favorite multiplayer online battle arena (Twitter being the most important MOBA) to join known mook allies to fight stereotypically familiar but often unknown interchangeable mook foes. They come prepared either to melee within the core, or skirmish on the periphery, either rallying around the knights riding under known beef-only banners, or adventuring by themselves in unflagged, unheralded side battles.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/01/16/the-internet-of-beefs/

Edit - My favourite part, which eloquently sums up our combined efforts in the Xbox vs. PS5 thread :lol:

A IoB beef is not mere trash-talk among people who are obviously friends, accompanied by laughter and signs of affection. Whether real or staged, a beef must present the appearance of a genuine conflict to the mook audience. Umbrage must be taken and seen to be taken. Insults must be hurled. The venom must seem real. The mutual dislike must be palpable.
 
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