News for June 1

Bloggy Monday

Every weekday on The Xenia Institute’s News & Analysis, I point to the news of the day and the conversations happening on some of the top progressive bloggers in the U.S. and around the globe, such as Andrew Sullivan, Ta-Nehisi Coates and the rest of the gang @The Atlantic, Matthew Yglesias @ThinkProgress, the American Prosect and other fine sources for good thinking. But there are plenty of writers out there who aren’t blogging for or cross-posting at a major publication or think tank  who deserve our attention, too. They don’t always join in on the big news topics of the day, so they might not get featured on News & Analysis.

So, every Monday this summer, I’m going to spotlight three blogs and/or blog posts of significance that have caught my eye and that deserve some attention. Are I’ll take requests from readers, too. Are there blogs that we need to add to our RSS feeders? Is there an amazing post from a blog that hasn’t shown up yet in this space? E-mail suggestions to me at barbara@xeniainstitute.org, and put “Bloggy Monday” in the subject line.

Links for the day include:

Abortion and Personhood  |  The League of Ordinary Gentlemen

In its “About” section, The League of Ordinary Gentlemen blog states:

The contributing writers hail from various points along the political spectrum, but all hold a deep and abiding commitment to the exploration of ideas outside the foray of rhetorical and ideological cul de sacs. The entries are less posts than they are dialogues with an aim towards sustained discussion on topics and issues that lay at the foundations of our lives. This approach, we hope, will provide readers with a thoughtful and searching alternative analysis.

And that’s exactly what they’re doing in this series of posts. They’re not especially making an argument for being for or against abortion rights (although it seems that they’re pro-rights, but for different reasons), but rather they’re looking behind the question of whether one supports a culture of life or one of death, and instead ask the questions such as “What counts as a human life?” and “How do we navigate these complex issues such as abortion, war and the death penalty fairly?” but more interestingly, “What if I am wrong?” For example:

I am not so foolhardy as to maintain that my experiences as a medical provider adequately describe the experiences of all (or even most) women who choose to terminate their pregnancies.  However, neither will I see them conveniently and quietly elided from the conversation.  Abortion is an immensely complicated issue, and one for which both sides have arguments of merit.  But, by all means, if we are going to discuss an issue as thorny as abortion in the first place, let us do so honestly.  Let us leave aside the easy cases at the margins, and discuss the difficult, cloudy middle.  Though I am not arrogant or stupid enough to believe there is an easy answer, neither do I believe we will move any closer if we refuse to ask the hardest questions.

It’s good dialogue, with readers and with themselves.

Informed Comment

The bulk of the posts on this blog are links to articles about what’s going on in the Middle East and other vital points in southwest Asia, which, sadly, don’t get as much press as they used to. However, these links are accompanied by short, sweet commentary by Juan Cole, president of the Global Americana Institute, a project whose goal is to bring the writings of early U.S. political thinkers to the Arab world. Cole has been providing serious and thorough coverage of Taliban attacks in Pakistan, which have been given pretty low priority by mainstream media. For example, on Sunday he posted:

There is speculation that the Pakistani military may turn next to Taliban strongholds in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The Taliban are not sitting on their hands waiting. They attacked a government military outpost in South Waziristan on Saturday. The military claims to have driven them off and to have killed 40 of them in the process.

Meanwhile, trouble is brewing to the west. Iran summoned Pakistan’s ambassador over evidence that a Sunni rebel group, Jundullah, was responsible for bombing a Shiite mosque in Zahidan. Zahidan is largely Baluch in ethnicity, not Persian, and most Baluch are Sunnis. They often chafe under Shiite rule. The small province of Sistan and Baluchistan has a population of 2.2 million (Iran’s population is over 70 million), and is one of the poorest and least developed in the country. Small separatist groups, which seek safe haven on the Pakistan side of the border, have operated for some time.

If you want to know what’s going on in the Middle East, begin with this blog.

GetReligion.org

GetReligion is not specifically a blog about religion in the news. For type of goodness, there’s still the occasional posts at Articles of Faith, Dallas Religion and other newspaper blogs (occasional, that is, because troubles in the newspaper industry have caused religion newswriters to get downsized or reassigned to other beats). Rather, GetReligion is a blog about how well the mainstream press covers or handles religion and religious issues when they pop up in the news. Basically, the bloggers at GetReligion understand that religion and religious issues are usually too complex for a soundbite or a 500-word article. Terry Mattingly recently clarified the blog’s purpose in a post:

The bottom line: This is not a religion-news blog; this is a blog about how the mainstream press wrestles with coverage of religion news. It helps to read that “What we do, why we do it” post every now and then.

Now, we also do our “Got news?” posts about stories that journalists seem to be missing. We also comment on op-eds and essays that are directly focused on religion news or trends that shape mainstream religion news (like the victory of European journalism at nonNewsweek battles). If something is linked to religion news, we have to consider writing about it.

They “fill in the gaps” in religion stories, and they ask the questions that the reporters who wrote the stories leave out. They also take requests, so if you see a story about religion that seems too one-sided or naïve, drop them an e-mail.