Category: Monkwire

Human Rights Watch & Nazi Memorabilia

~ Michael A. Innes ~ 1 Comment

Sharon Weinberger’s got an interesting post up at Danger Room on Mark Garlasco, “a former Pentagon official” who “rose to prominence as a senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch, looking at, among other things, Israel’s use of white phosphorous during Operation Cast Lead.” Weinberger writes that Garlasco, who “has also worked on reports looking at civilian casualties in conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Georgia, among others,” has just been suspended from Human Rights Watch after being outed on the web as an alleged Nazi paraphernalia fetishist.

Weinberger makes some good points about the case, and notes the cultural and legal implications, at least in Germany, of collecting Nazi relics and artifacts.  I thought that was interesting. When I was based in Sarajevo a few years ago, I’d come across old Nazi paraphernalia all the time.  Unit patches from the 1992-1995 Yugoslav wars were commonly available, including a range of mujahedin unit insignia and even one of the Black Swans, an Iranian sponsored and trained paramilitary. But there’s also a market among dealers in the former Yugoslav states for the older, WWII Nazi stuff, sourced out of Croatia – the Independent State of Croatia was a Nazi puppet state, and where the Nazis first trialed a lot of the death camp technologies used later in the war.

Do You Think I Should Be Prime Minister?

~ Michael A. Innes ~ 5 Comments

I’ve always been a fan of Rory Stewart’s writing. His spare prose sits well, and I can appreciate his criticism of internationals parachuted in to fix cultures of which they have neither experience nor knowledge.  I’ve never been overly sympathetic of his critics, who  deride his colonial profile, his precociousness, or his view from the weeds. His style works well as a source of engaging reading material.  As bona fide expertise, though, a lot of it  – his ideas, and his qualifications to offer them  – rubs the wrong way. Emily Stokes’ interview with him, published in the Financial Times at the end of July, doesn’t paint a flattering portrait… and raises some questions as to how connected he his with the realities around him. Or how disconnected he is from them.

Maybe that’s just the way FT decided to portray him. I don’t know the man, except from what he’s written, so difficult to say. You be the judge.  It would be interesting, though, to see how political life in Britain would treat him.

“Do you think I should be a politician, Emily?” he asks. I say why not. “Do you think I should I be prime minister?” I tell him that I think he should try being a politician first. Stewart clearly has some concerns about how he would be received as an MP in Britain. Will people be prejudiced towards him because he went to Eton? Does he come across too earnest in interviews? Should he be more light-hearted? Does an MP need to support a football team? Stewart is better at observing ancient Afghan traditions than modern British ones; he doesn’t know a thing about football. The only advice I can think of seems to come from his own book – to keep acting on his feet, and to bear in mind that no one, not even Rory Stewart, can be an expert on everything.

Read the rest here. H/t Kenneth Payne.

Fascists on Britain’s Streets?

~ Michael A. Innes ~ 4 Comments

This, in today’s Guardian:

A cabinet minister last night raised the spectre of a return to 1930s fascism, warning of “parallels” between rightwing groups planning protests in Muslim neighbourhoods and Oswald Mosley’s incendiary marches through Jewish areas of east London in the 1930s.

Read the rest here.

The Date

~ Michael A. Innes ~ Leave a comment

It wasn’t until I read Dan Drezner’s note on the date – 9/11 – that I realized I was starting my personal blog on the eighth anniversary of 11 September 2001. Completely unintentional. Drezner offers a couple of good points on threat inflation and resilience. Me? The personal referent for this was that 11 September 2001 coincided with my first day of teaching, for an undergraduate course on non-Western history. I had three early morning classes in a row, 25 students each. Students in the first session were muttering about the news, although nothing was clear at that point. By the time the second session started, people were better informed, but I was still completely clueless. When  a couple of them related what they’d heard, I cancelled the lecture, then went back to my apartment and stayed glued to the tube for the next 24 hours.