A world between two Poles. The late Pope John Paul II is remembered in this extraordinary Debka analysis, which details the relationship between the Carter administration's Polish-born national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and a Polish archbishop named Karol Wojtyla. Debka traces how the relationship between the two men, which began in 1976 and continued "for years after Wojtyla’s investiture as Pope John Paul II on October 22, 1978", changed the course of history. In Debka's analysis, the religious passion of the Poles living under a Communist regime was none other than the "doomsday weapon" of the cold war; but, the Israeli site argues, the Americans drew some wrong lessons from their success against Communism, believing that fundamentalist Islam could be productively harnessed in West Asia in the same way that Catholicism was in East Europe. The rest, as they say, is history. Read the article at the link.
Andrea Dworkin remembered. Barry Deutsch (aka Ampersand) had his criticisms of Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005), but that hasn't stopped him from posting a tribute to her life and work. Go there for Dworkin-related links.
