The Duck of Minerva

Tweets of the Week #3

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by Rodger Payne

28 September 2014, 1348 EDT

Twitter HQ: Logo artwork

It’s the weekend, so it’s time for the third edition of “Tweets of the Week.” My twitter feed was again filled with some interesting micro-blogging.

By the way, I apologize for the way last week’s home page post looked. Obviously, I’m doing something wrong with the images, though it seems to be fine once the reader clicks the link to Continue Reading. I hope readers can see the image at the top of this page.

This week, the bombing campaign against ISIS/ISIL was ramped up thanks to new air strikes in Syria. I believe that most people in my feed are unenthusiastic about the entire enterprise — though for a variety of reasons:

https://twitter.com/zackbeauchamp/status/514256232795107329

https://twitter.com/PersianPrinzess/status/514874254764961793

Of course, the campaign has significant implications for neighboring states like Turkey:

https://twitter.com/melissarfleming/status/513789272155881472

And for Syria:

https://twitter.com/intelwire/status/514562523077431296

 

To build support for the attacks, the U.S. made much of the fact that it was joined by 5 regional Arab partners:

In any event, there were plenty of reminders in my feed that Middle East politics are complicated in myriad ways. Did you see this?

Or this? While the governments of 5 regional Arab partners may be participating in the air strikes, some of their affluent citizens are backing the other side:

Indeed, U.S. enemies and allies in the region have long been complicated:

The war wasn’t the only interesting development in global politics last week.

Last Sunday’s climate change march in New York City provoked a flood (sorry) of terrific tweets about the future of the planet. First, though, a tweet with a drone’s view of the event:

And here’s a reminder of why the participants see this issue as so vital:

https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/status/513820005826191360

 

Rodger A. Payne is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Louisville. He serves on the University’s Sustainability Council and was a co-founder of the Peace, Conflict, and Social Justice program. He is the author of dozens of journal articles and book chapters and coauthor, with Nayef Samhat, of Democratizing Global Politics: Discourse Norms, International Regimes, and Political Community (SUNY, 2004). He is currently working on two major projects, one exploring the role of narratives in international politics and the other examining the implications of America First foreign policy.

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