Best of the week - 12 June 2020

12 June 2020

Each week BISA Director, Juliet Dryden, scours the internet for COVID-19 content that might interest you. Here she brings you this week's best readings and podcasts. She also gives you 'The best of the rest' - readings and podcasts to keep you up to date with what's happening around the world. This week she finishes with a weird and wonderful article on the origins of eels.

COVID-related news

The Economist on how coronavirus looks from abroad
Peter Frankopan looks at the chilling lack of bio-security in research labs for Prospect Magazine
Frances Fukuyama in Foreign Affairs on the pandemic and political order
Lawrence Freedman for the New Statesman asks where the science went wrong?
Frank Partnoy in the Atlantic looks at the looming bank collapse. Are financial systems on the cusp of calamity?
Lockdown was liberating for Alexander Pushkin says the Economist
What if working from home goes on forever? Clive Thompson for the New York Times magazine
Return of the paranoid style: Fake news is fooling more conservatives than liberals. Why? asks the Economist
Podcast: Intelligence Squared talks to Arand Giridharadas about capitalism in the time of corona. What is the relationship between the market, capitalism and the state?

The best of the rest

Global Order

America, China and the perils of confrontation. Lee Hsien Loong in Foreign Affairs.
Jens Stoltenburg, NATO’s Secretary-General, envisages a more global alliance - setting his sights on China.

Black Lives Matter protests

George Floyd protests show how the US has retreated from its position as a world leader
What black America means to Europe. Gary Younge in the New York Review of Books
Rhodes must fall. Amia Srinivasam on the campaigns in Oxford and Cape Town in the London Review of Books
America Explodes: Adam Shatz on Trump’s domestic war in the London Review of Books
Podcast: Black Lives Matter from the Reasons to be Cheerful podcast series. After George Floyd's murder, Black Lives Matter protests are again taking place around the world against police violence and systemic racism. What can we do to make this a moment of real change?
Podcast: Police State USA from Talking Politics. Listen to Adom Getachew, Jasson Perez and Gary Gerstle about the politics of protest and the politics of policing in America. What does 'Defund the Police' mean in practice? Is the current crisis likely to empower or curtail the surveillance state? How are the current protests different from ones we've seen in the past? And where Minneapolis leads, will the world follow?
Podcast: Empire state of mind from the Reasons to be Cheerful archive podcast series. Has our failure to understand Britain’s history played a role in recent political events? Listen to Professor Gurminder Bhambra, expert in postcolonial studies, and Jason Todd, former history teacher and now lecturer in history education, discuss the teaching of the British Empire in schools.

Middle East

The end of a two state solution? Ian Black for the Guardian
After liberal zionism, the one hope for a democratic Israel. Omri Boehm for the New York Review of Books
Under Trump, Coercion Replaces Social Purpose, Accelerating American Decline in the Middle East. Bamo Nouri and Inderjeet Parmar for The Wire
How will the US Caesar act affect Syrian and Lebanese economies? The Guardian.

Liberalism in a radical age

Damon Linker for the Week on what happens when journalists stop believing in debate
Jonathan Chait for Intelligencer argues the Still-Vital Case for Liberalism in a Radical Age
Podcast: Jonathan Shainin, Head of Opinion at the Guardian, is back talking us through the big blow-up at the NYT. What has it taught us about the new battlegrounds in newspaper opinion? Where does power now lie in newspaper offices? And where does Jonathan draw the line between what can and can't be published?