IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair. We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.
Tanner Colby, in a comprehensive examination of race in the USA, looks at the ‘massive liberal failure on race’. The advertising industry, for example, is only marginally better now than it was in the times depicted on Mad Men, he argues.
(Slate – approx 28 minutes reading time, 5671 words)
Culturally, legally, and economically, the industry settled into a pattern which ensured that “white” advertising happened over here and “black” advertising happened over there. White agencies did little more than token hiring and recruiting.
Conor McCauley looks at the Hyde Park deal, and the ‘on the runs’ controversy. The situation of on the run republicans was dealt with in “an unorthodox way” he argues.
(BBC – approx 5 minutes reading time, 1181 words)
Twenty-two IRA men who had broken out of jail were invited to border hotels where they were arrested by appointment and immediately given temporary release papers. They were then freed on licence under the early release scheme. John Downey and those like him presented a more difficult challenge. They were suspected of involvement in, but had never been charged with, serious crime.
Rutger Bregman looks at welfare, and whether it works. He argues that we should give free money to everyone. Here’s why:
(De Correspondent – approx 20 minutes reading time, 4036 words)
Simon’s life was turned upside down by the money. Having been addicted to heroin for twenty years, he finally got clean and began with gardening classes. ‘For the first time in my life everything just clicked, it feels like now I can do something’, he says. ‘I’m thinking of going back home. I’ve got two kids.’
Robin Bairner tells the story of what happened to French international Jean-Pierre Adams, who was given anaesthetic in hospital in 1982… and has yet to awake from the resulting coma.
(The Guardian – approx 13 minutes reading time, 2724 words)
“It’s all fine, I’m in great shape,” were his parting words to Bernadette as he left on the morning of the operation. His wife was worried and only more so when it took three calls to the hospital before she was passed on to a doctor. “Come here now,” she was told gravely.
Susan Zalkind worked with This American Life to bring us the story that connects the Boston bombing suspect Tamerlin Tsarnaev and the murder of three men in 2011. (Contains some images that people might find disturbing)
(Boston Magazine – approx 39 minutes reading time, 7980 words)
On September 12, she returned unexpectedly from Florida—most of Brendan’s friends were under the impression that she wasn’t coming back—and after she couldn’t reach Brendan on her cell phone, she showed up at the apartment and asked the landlord to open the door. The bodies were inside. One news report says that Hiba left the house and screamed, “They’re all dead!”
Hubert Gude meets Michael von Dolsperg, who gave German intelligence information the neo-Nazi scene for a number of years. But his file was eventually shredded, leading him to wonder if information in them could have prevented a series of murders.
(Der Spiegel – approx 14 minutes reading time, 2911 words)
The fact that Dolsperg’s informant past has now been exposed is a disaster for German intelligence as well. Tarif wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill mole in the neo-Nazi scene. His case raises a number of questions about the investigation into the NSU neo-Nazi terrorist group, which murdered 10 people between 2000 and 2006. One question stands out above all: Why did Tarif’s file mysteriously disappear from the BfV archive?
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
In 1973, Cameron Crowe got his first cover story detailing the Allman Brothers’ long, arduous journey to success. Crowe’s own career went on to inspire Almost Famous, and it’s hard to believe he was so young when he was first published.
(Rolling Stone – approx 25 minutes reading time, 5303 words)
Most of the Brothers believe that it was the new musical direction that brought Berry Oakley out of a year-long depression he had suffered after Duane Allman’s death. “When Duane died,” Red Dog says, “Berry died. He loved and idolized Duane. For quite a few months, that’s all he thought about. He was obsessed with Duane.”
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