Friday’s Reading List
By Taylor Marvin
Diego Velázquez, “Dios Marte”, 1638. Via Wikimedia.
What I read this week:
Don’t underestimate Iran’s election upset. Navid Hassanpour looks at the context of Rouhani’s win. Kevin Lees has had excellent coverage of the election.
Vali Nasr asks if Rouhani’s election could lead to progress on the nuclear issue.
Daniel R. DePetris sees the Obama administration’s decision to begin arming Syrian rebels as a dangerous internationalization of the conflict. Meanwhile, heavy weaponry has already begin arriving in the rebel’s hands.
Josh Busby asks if there’s a right way to do development.
This speculative piece by Nimrod Goren and Elie Podeh at Open Zion on the Arab Spring’s opportunities for Israel strikes me as fantastical, at best.
Massive demonstrations and brutal, if unsurprising, police violence hit Brazil. Why the protests are about more than bus fares. Greg Weeks warns academics and journalists not to “witness a protest, then just walk backwards to identify what conditions were present, then correlate the protest with those conditions.”
Earlier this week I rounded up links on political violence and conflict for PV Glance. I also contributed to this week’s Friday Puzzler post.
Smoke & Stir 
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