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MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
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Jeremy Scahill’s new book and film Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, is an investigation into the U.S. government’s covert wars which he suggests are drawing the nation deeper into conflict across the globe, setting the world stage for destabilization and blowback. The talk was followed by a conversation with Tom Engelhardt.
This event was part of Lannan's In Pursuit of Cultural Freedom series.
The negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program held in Geneva, Nov. 7–9, made unprecedented progress toward an agreement. US Secretary of State John Kerry announced at the conclusion of the talks, “We came to Geneva to narrow the differences, and I can tell you without any reservations, we made significant progress. It takes time to build confidence between countries that have really been at odds with each other for a long time now.”
By Matthew Giles, Daily Intelligencer @ newyorker.com, Nov. 11, 2013
When Bronx teenager Cory Dunton allegedly opened fire at the Bryant Park ice rink on Saturday, wounding two, he was reportedly looking to steal another teen's Marmot Mammoth parka. Also known as "The Biggie" — it is baggy and tends to be worn large — the garment has developed a dangerous reputation in recent years after inspiring multiple slayings. An anonymous Mammoth admirer took to the website of Paragon Sports, the exclusive seller of the parka until Marmot recently discontinued production, to warn New Yorkers against purchasing one: "this is not the coat for yu if yu live in NYC yu will get robbed." Daily Intelligencer spoke with a Paragon clerk (who asked not to be named) to learn more about this parka with a body count [....]
By Annie-Rose Strasser, ThinkProgress, Nov. 8, 2013
[....] Sadly, the relative media ignorance of the shooting tracks with a common theme: Gun crimes often occur in low-income neighborhoods with largely non-white victims, but, from the news, you’d think every shooting put the white and affluent at risk of violence. There’s an obvious reason from a producer’s perspective: They want traffic, or viewers, and think they can get more if more well-off news consumers are self-concerned with the story. But it doesn’t reflect the reality of gun violence in the United States, where black people are far more likely to be victims of gun homicides compared to their white counterparts [....]
For more on gun violence in Detroit, see this piece by Ashley Woods @ Huffington Post, which piggybacks off the above.
By Laurie Goodstein, New York Times, Nov. 9/10, 2013
SMYRNA, Ga. — When Pope Francis was elected in March, Bridget Kurt received a small prayer card with his picture at her church and put it up on her refrigerator at home [....] She is a regular attender of Mass, a longtime stalwart in her church’s anti-abortion movement and a believer that all the church’s doctrines are true and beautiful and should be obeyed. She loved the last two popes, and keeps a scrapbook with memorabilia from her road trip to Denver in 1993 to see Pope John Paul II at World Youth Day.
But Ms. Kurt recently took the Pope Francis prayer card down and threw it away.
“It seems he’s focusing on bringing back the left that’s fallen away, but what about the conservatives?” said Ms. Kurt, a hospice community educator. “Even when it was discouraging working in pro-life, you always felt like Mother Teresa was on your side and the popes were encouraging you. Now I feel kind of thrown under the bus.”
[....] Some Catholics in the church’s conservative wing in the United States say Francis has left them feeling abandoned and deeply unsettled. On the Internet and in conversations among themselves, they despair that after 35 years in which the previous popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, drew clear boundaries between right and wrong, Francis is muddying Catholic doctrine to appeal to the broadest possible audience [....]
Most American Catholics do not share Mr. Skojec’s objections. A poll released last month by Quinnipiac University found that two in three agreed with Francis that the church was too “obsessed” with a few issues. [....]
BBC News, 10 Nov., 2013
Sectarian tension between Shia and Sunni Muslims is probably the most serious threat to the world security, according Iran's foreign minister.
Speaking to the BBC, Mohamed Javad Zarif blamed some Sunni countries for what he called "fear-mongering". "Some people have fanned the animosity for short-sighted political interests," he said.
Syria, Iraq and Pakistan are among the countries currently grappling with a surge in sectarian violence.
Mr Zarif said conflict between Sunnis and Shias was "the most serious security threat not only to the region but to the world at large". "I think we need to come to understand that a sectarian divide in the Islamic world is a threat to all of us." [....]
Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Liberty, Nov. 8, 2013
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has criticized neighboring Saudi Arabia, accusing the Sunni Muslim kingdom of being unfriendly toward Iraq's Shi'a-led government. Maliki, a Shi'a Muslim, made the comments in a November 7 interview with Alhurra-Iraq TV in Baghdad.
“We don’t’ have any problems [with the governments of neighboring countries] anymore except for Saudi Arabia," he said. "Saudi Arabia has chosen not to be a friend of Iraq. In contrast, Iraq wants friendly relations with Saudi Arabia."
"We don’t have disputes [with others].We don’t need money. We don’t have border problems or territorial disputes. We are not involved in our neighbors’ internal disputes. We don’t have any problems with anyone except Saudi Arabia. And whenever we try to solve our problems with them, we hear [negative] statements. "Recently, the Saudi Prince who visited Washington before us [last week] made a statement that also made the Americans angry. He said that [Saudi Arabia] will not change its [policies toward Iraq] as long as Shi'a are ruling Iraq." [....]
By Andrew Rosati, special to the Miami Herald, Nov. 8, 2013
CARACAS -- Jim Wyss, the Miami Herald’s Andean bureau chief, was detained by Venezuelan authorities Thursday while reporting on the country’s chronic shortages and looming municipal elections. Wyss remained in custody Friday afternoon.
According to local sources, Wyss was initially detained by the National Guard then transferred to Venezuela’s counter military intelligence, Dirección General de Inteligencia Militar (Dgim), in San Cristóbal [....]
Also see:
Venezuela detains 'Miami Herald' reporter
By Peter Wilson, Special to USA TODAY, Nov. 8, 2013
CARACAS -- Venezuelan security forces detained a Miami Herald reporter Thursday night as he reported in the southwestern city of San Cristobal.
Jim Wyss, the paper's Andean bureau chief, was detained after he interviewed members of the campaign team of an opposition candidate running for mayor in San Cristobal, the capital of Tachira state, near the border with Colombia.
El Universal reported that police detained Wyss and confiscated his belongings. No reason was given.
Wyss, an American citizen, is based in Bogota, Colombia [....]
"101 East" @ Al Jazeera English, 8 Nov., 2013
New Zealand ranks as one of the world's most peaceful countries in the Global Peace Index every year. Yet despite a strong reputation for social justice and equality, the South Pacific nation has the second highest rate of imprisonment rates in the western world.
In the past two decades, the jail population has doubled. One international study examining law and order across western nations attributes it to a "tough on crime" approach by New Zealand's political parties since the 1980's, even though crime rates are low [....]
One in two prisoners is indigenous Maori even though they only account for just 15 percent of the population. Maori are overrepresented in all sectors of the criminal justice system due to soaring rates of child poverty, school dropout, unemployment and family breakdown within indigenous communities.
Many say going to prison has become normalised in Maori society because every child has a relative who is locked up [....]
By Holly Morris, Special to CNN, Nov. 7, 2013
Editor's note: Holly Morris is co-producer/director of the forthcoming documentary "The Babushkas of Chernobyl" Follow her on Twitter @Holly Morris. She spoke at TEDGlobal 2013 in June [....]
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
It's all about context. [....]
It is often assumed that intelligence agencies are worlds of their own, and that they sometimes act on their own authority. However, they are also an expression of the societies in which they exist, especially of their fears. In other words, it is quite possible that there are not just paranoid agents, but also paranoid democracies that act in hysterical ways out of fear. They are characterized by a strong freedom myth, which leads to paranoia. It, in turn, poses a threat to freedom. The United States is currently in a late phase of this cycle.
Freedom means that there is an endless range of possibilities, and that anything can happen, including both good and bad things. That's why freedom engenders fear. The greater the freedom, the greater the fear. Where does America's fear come from?
Did the Obama Administration ever spy on Mitt Romney during the recent presidential contest? Alex Tabarrok, who raised the question at the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution, acknowledges that it is provocative. Until recently, he would've regarded it as a "loony" question, he writes, and he doesn't think that President Obama ordered the NSA to spy on Romney for political gain.
By Jethro Mullen, CNN, Nov. 7, 2013
Super Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever observed, made landfall Friday morning in the Philippines, the country's weather service reported.
Thousands of people in vulnerable areas of the central Philippines were evacuated as the monster storm spun toward the country.
With sustained winds of 315 kph (195 mph) and gusts as strong as 380 kph (235 mph), Haiyan churned across the Western Pacific into the Philippines.
Its wind strength makes it equivalent to an exceptionally strong Category 5 hurricane.
Haiyan will move over the many islands of the central Philippines over the next 18 hours before exiting into the South China Sea overnight Friday into Saturday. Haiyan will weaken slightly as the storm crosses land, but forecasters with the Philippine weather agency, Pagasa, predict that it will maintain super typhoon intensity throughout its passage of the islands [....]
Also see:
Monster Typhoon Haiyan roars into Philippines
BBC News, Nov. 7, 2013
The category-five storm was centred 62 km south-east of Guiuan, in the country's Eastern Samar province, the national weather service said.
Schools and offices have been closed in the path of the storm, and thousands evacuated amid fears of serious damage.
The region was already struggling to recover from an earthquake last month [....]
By Michael R. Gordon, New York Times, Nov. 7/8, 2013
Even as the two sides tried to finalize the agreement on Thursday, fissures have widened between the United States and some of its principal allies over the potential pact.
[....] Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to travel here on Friday at the invitation of Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, in an effort to “to help narrow differences,” a senior State Department official said. If that goes well, the pact could be announced later in the day, Iranian officials said. [....]
Mr. Kerry and senior American officials here have touted the idea of a multistage agreement [....] The first phase of the accord would suspend Iran’s nuclear effort for as long as six months in return for limited sanctions relief, which could include access to frozen assets. [....]
Critics, however, are not waiting for an agreement to be announced before denouncing it as a failure of will. On Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned of a “grievous historic error” that he said would enable Iran to keep enriching uranium and preserve the option of developing nuclear arms while undermining support in the international community for economic sanctions.
“If the news that I am receiving of the impending proposal by the P5 plus 1 is true, this is the deal of the century, for Iran,” Mr. Netanyahu told a visiting delegation of American lawmakers, using the phrase for the world powers involved in the talks, and taking a stance that echoes similar worries in Saudi Arabia [....]
Back in 2005, a member organization of the Chamber of Commerce in Owensboro, Kentucky asked the Chamber if it could stop paying dues to the Chamber yet still get the benefits. This is what the Chamber said:
By Sunainaa Chadha, FirstPost Business, Nov 7, 2013
India is ranked sixth in a list of top ten countries with most billionaires but is at a much lower ninth slot in total net worth sweepstakes, a new Wealth report by WealthX and UBS titled “Billionaire Census 2013″ has shown.
The country has 103 billionaires, higher than that of Hong Kong , France, Saudi Arabia and Switzerland but their aggregate net worth is just $180 billion only above Switzerland’s $128 billion of 61 billionaires.
The US tops the list with 515 billionaires having an eye popping net worth of $2,064 billion. This is over three times the number of billionaires in China, which has the world’s second largest billionaire population of 157. The total worth of the Chinese billionaires is $384 billion—about one-fifth of corresponding US figure.
Interestingly, the worth of German and UK billionaires is much higher than that of China’s though they have fewer billionaires—148 and 135, respectively. And total net worth of Indian billionaires is not even half of China’s.
Moreover [....]
Despite the presence of some Occupy agitators, nobody shouts "This is what democracy looks like!" in the irresistible politicians-meet-the-people documentary Caucus, probably because to do so would be to risk inviting despair. AJ Schnack's film follows one of the great humiliations of American life: the slow, soiling ritual of presidential hopefuls pressing the flesh in preparation for the Iowa Caucus — and often discovering that much of that flesh has already been pressed, persuasively, by some other candidate the week before. ...The film's subject, the 2012 Republican presidential caucus, determines the form: This is a gently dispirited farce, a spectacle of also-rans and why-did-they-runs desperate to prove their fealty to every qualm and misapprehension of one small slice of an already homogenous population. Bachmann talks up that wall because, 1,000 miles from the border, illegal immigration from Mexico is something Iowans continually drill the candidates about. "Our enemies" are "sneaking across the border," grumbles an old man at a Godfather's Pizza, just after bragging to Santorum about saving Medicare money by having sent back an apparatus to help with his sleep apnea.
By Joshua Levine, T Magazine @ nytimes.com, Nov. 1, 2013
In Tbilisi, Georgia, a shiny new architectural skyline has become a political issue as much as an aesthetic one — is it slapdash commercialism ruining the culture’s authentic history or a step toward a more progressive society?
Accompanying slideshow caption: Future Shock: Next-gen architecture sits, sometimes uncomfortably, alongside vernacular old-world buildings erected and modified by Persians, Byzantines, Ottomans, Russians and Soviets
This photo's credit/caption: Simon Roberts/A monk looks on at Tbilisi’s half-built theater and exhibition hall, designed by the Italian architects Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas.
By Spencer Ackerman in Washington, the guardian.com, 5 Nov., 2013
Apple has jumped into the thick of the legal fight over transparency surrounding technology giants’ sharing of customer data with the National Security Agency.
In a surprisingly caustic filing to the secretive court overseeing government surveillance, Apple argued that the US government ought to lift the gag order preventing it from informing customers about even basic information concerning data-sharing with the NSA and other agencies.
Apple joined Yahoo, Microsoft, LinkedIn and other tech firms in arguing for greater leeway to explain its co-operation with the US intelligence community just as it released its first-ever report on how it complies with data requests from world governments [....]
My comment: contrary to the opinion of some in the blogosphere, seems to me like the "ruling plutocracy" can't always get what it wants.
By Elise Viebeck, HealthWatch blog @ thehill.com, Nov. 5, 2013
The labor movement appears likely to dodge a key tax under ObamaCare less than two months after the White House refused to make union plans eligible for subsidies.
The Obama administration indicated last week it will propose exempting certain self-insured, self-administered insurance plans from two of the healthcare law's three-year reinsurance fees.
The policies that would escape the fees include the multi-employer or "Taft Hartley" plans that are commonly held by union members.
The disclosure, buried in rules released by the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department, would give unions some of the relief they have sought from ObamaCare.
"We also intend to propose in future rulemaking to exempt self-insured, self-administered plans from the requirement to make reinsurance contributions in 2015 and 2016," HHS said.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told reporters on Wednesday that the labor federation is reviewing the proposal [.....]
By Caroline Humer, Reuters, Nov. 6, 2013
They are predicting deadlines will be extended because of this (in line with guidance it had received from "government entities" on how slowly the sign-up process was unfolding--whether this comes from their meeting with the White House chief of staff on Weds. is unclear.) And they are predicting that this situation, in turn, will screw up the expected pools upon which everything is predicated. They are basically warning their investors not to expect any profit, and maybe even losses, that their involvement in the exchanges should be thought of now as a long term opportunity.
[....] A significant shortfall in enrollees, particularly among young and healthy Americans who cost less to insure, would undermine the ability of the exchanges to work financially.
"Our assumption is that there will be an extension to the open enrollment period," Humana Chief Operating Officer Jim Murray said during a call with investors to discuss quarterly results. [....]
This is why Secretary Sibelius just adamantly insisted to Congress that extensions are not an option, hopefully predicting there will be huge waves of enrollees just in the knick of time (especially young ones) once the website is fully fixed, and also probably why she encouraged people to continue to try to sign up through it now.
Beginning Nov. 1, food stamp cutbacks mean $36 per month less for a family of four.
Public “servants” like Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan and Democratic former President Bill Clinton point to the failure of poverty programs to end poverty, and then slash those program budgets or abolish them altogether. Clinton’s actions did away with Aid to Families with Dependent Children in a fell swoop he dubbed “welfare reform.”
Meanwhile, the chronic test failure of anti-missile rockets never results in budget cuts, but is called reason enough for more funding.