Seriously.
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
In an Op-ed piece by Eugene Robinson, he writes about how delusional the GOP is and points out that their only plan going forward is "whistling past the graveyard." It is a good read.
There's a new big macher in town. On Tuesday, July 9, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu officially named Ron Dermer to be his next ambassador to Washington, formally bringing current ambassador Michael Oren's four-year tenure to an end in the fall. In replacing Oren with Dermer (full disclosure: Oren was my professor in graduate school at Harvard University, and we have maintained a good relationship), Netanyahu is replacing one American-turned-Israeli with another, but that is where the similarities end.
BMaz goes through the actual trial evidence, sees almost certain acquittal based on witness testimony.
The question is what might be done. A single national solution is unlikely to work. Dr Murray and his colleagues report that the gap between life expectancies in the highest and lowest ranked counties has widened since 1985 (see chart below). In the top counties—Marin County, California for women and Fairfax County, Virginia for men—the life expectancies rival those of Switzerland and Japan. At the same time, at least one of every nine counties has a life expectancy lower than Nicaragua's. Parts of West Virginia and Mississippi fare worse than Bangladesh and Algeria.
By Doug Stanglin, USA Today, July 10, 2013
WikiLeaks hints that the international stalemate over National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden's bid for asylum could be broken Wednesday [....]
[....] "Venezuela seems to be the most plausible choice," Greenwald tells CBS. "They are the ones best equipped to, I think, get him from Moscow to Latin America safely, and then to protect him once he's there.
"The difficulty is figuring out how to get to where he wants to go without the world's empire preventing him from getting there," Greenwald said, referring to the United States [....]
As conservatives bond to pass trickily or overtly more and more anti-women legislation, one very articulate and expressive woman dragged away from the Senate mic for daring to express her views in a cutting manner only 1/10th as vicious as the typical right-wing legislator rant against women.
By David Abel, The Boston Globe, July 10, 2013
[....] Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will appear in federal court Wednesday in Boston to face charges that he used weapons of mass destruction to kill three people and wound more than 260 others at the Boston Marathon.
Tsarnaev, who is also accused of killing an MIT police officer, faces 30 federal criminal charges, including use of a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death and bombing of a place of public use resulting in death. Authorities allege...and that he left a confession in the boat justifying the bombings as payback for US military action in Muslim countries.
Seventeen of the charges carry the possibility of the death penalty [....]
The appearance of the former University of Massachusetts Dartmouth student is expected to be brief and under heavy guard. It should answer questions about the extent of injuries he sustained during a firefight with police the night before he was captured and how much he has recovered [....]
Prosecutors said they expect a packed courtroom at US District Court on Wednesday afternoon. They have set aside seats for victims [....]
He can't say much, but sometimes questions are as telling as statements.
By Emma Green, The Atlantic, July 9, 2013
Justice Stephen Breyer won't officially comment on the Edward Snowden situation, but that didn't stop him from offering some broad thoughts on the legal and philosophical issues at stake during an interview with Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman at the Aspen Ideas Festival last week [....]
In the interest of preserving your freedoms and bolstering our fair nation, here is the full articulation of the deeply paranoid and complex life you must live in order to assure that the government leaves you alone.
By Tom Kingdon, Los Angeles Times, July 8, 2013
ROME -- Against a backdrop of growing anti-immigration sentiment in Europe, Pope Francis on Monday used his first papal trip outside the Vatican to denounce the "globalization of indifference" to migrants, calling their suffering "a painful thorn in my heart."
The pontiff traveled to the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa to drop a wreath of flowers into the Mediterranean in mourning for the thousands of migrants and asylum seekers who have drowned while sailing from Africa to Europe in search of a better life. [....]
Francis' fiercely worded homily, delivered before a crowd of 10,000 people, highlighted his focus on the plight of the poor and marginalized.
Just 70 miles off the coast of Tunisia, Lampedusa is a favored landing point in Europe for African migrants, who travel on rickety fishing boats that often run out of fuel or sink in rough weather. About 8,400 migrants landed in Italy and the nearby island of Malta in the first half of this year, up from 4,500 in the same period last year [....]
By Tim Craig, Washington Post, July 8, 2013
Pakistan says its senior political and military leaders are to blame for not detecting Osama bin Laden’s presence in the country and then failing to respond when U.S. forces moved into Pakistani airspace to kill him in 2011, according to a government report that became public Monday.
The report, issued by a high-level commission that spent nearly two years studying the al-
Qaeda leader’s capture, offers an unusually candid assessment of the failings of Pakistan’s intelligence services and military. It provides new insight into how bin Laden, the world’s most hunted man at the time, was able to move around and live in Pakistan [....]
For more see:
Abbottabad Commission’s report on Osama’s stay in Pakistan, US raid
By Baqir Sajjad Syed, Dawn, July 9, 2013
'Culpable negligence incompetence at all levels of govt'
ISLAMABAD: The Abbottabad (Osama bin Laden) Commission has concluded that the global terror kingpin’s nine-year-long stay in Pakistan and the May 2011 secret US raid, in which he was killed, were because of “gross incompetence” of the state institutions, but was particularly critical of ISI for being too casual in first tracking him and then investigating the May 2 denouement.
The 336-page classified report, which was revealed by Al Jazeera on its website on Monday, a day after Dawn carried the initial story, was a scathing criticism of the performance of the intelligence agencies, with the commission members specifically observing that the most well-resourced ISI acted unprofessionally, lacked commitment to fight extremism and terror and obstructed the performance of other spy outfits.
Accessing the report on Al Jazeera’s website became difficult soon after it was released due to unexplained reasons [....]
and:
Findings of Abbottabad Commission: How US reached Osama
By Malik Asad, Dawn, July 9, 2013
By Connor Simpson, The Atlantic Wire, July 7, 2013
On July 4th, documentary filmmaker named Chris Barrett took his newly acquired pair of Google Glasses out for a stroll on the very busy, proudly recovered Jersey Shore boardwalk. What happened next was either something extraordinary, or something completely innocuous, depending on how much hyperbole you like to put behind things that happen on Google Glass [.....]
[....] Christophe Gevrey, the Global Head of Editorial Solutions for Thompson Reuters, writes on his personal website that the video does signal something significant: "More notable than the video itself is the ease at which it was captured without the knowledge of those in the middle of the melee," he says. "His footage foreshadows the rapidly approaching future where everything can be filmed serendipitously by folks wearing devices like Google Glass without the knowledge of the parties involved." If the NSA is big brother, Glassholes are the new little brother. [.....]
At the dawn of the Cold War, America’s intelligence agencies began constructing a vast surveillance machine. It was a machine with many parts, and a codename for each program it ran.
It was a machine made of copper wire twisted around switchboard terminals, and microphones installed covertly in homes and offices. It was made from COINTELPRO‘s human informants, and from manila envelopes marked JUNE MAIL bound for J. Edgar Hoover’s “Personal & Confidential” file.
The Guardian, July 8, 2013
Some of the coverage here is jaw-dropping.
For example, I don't ever recall ever seeing a military spokesman speak at a press conference like this, @ 3:17 pm: The military spokesman Ahmed Ali offers condolences from the army to all Egyptians for those who have fallen. He says it is a sin to shed the blood of any individual. He hopes calm and security will come next. He wants to show some video clips that will support his statement, he says. Ali recalls 26 June, when the Egyptian armed forces started their deployment. Their first goal was to protect all the citizens of Egypt, he says. and @ 3:20 pm: Ali says there were acts of incitement and provocation to instigate acts of violence from demonstrators against military facilities. The armed forces handed down more than one warning, he says, that military units and personnel cannot be approached. This is common around the world, he says. Despite all this, the army dealt with the angry protesters with absolute prudence and sympathy, he says. An angry protester is an Egyptian citizen, a brother whose protection is the duty of the army, he says.....
Another example, these Tweets @ 3:05 pm:
The marijuana market has expanded from an illegal consumer pastime to one with growing investment opportunities.
According to Pew Research, 52 percent of people say marijuana should be legalized, compared to 12 percent in 1969. Expenses are adding up on petitioning efforts on the state level. Almost $145,000 has been spent on lobbying in Colorado this fiscal year, for example, according to an analysis of data from the secretary of state done by a Colorado newspaper. And according to marijuana industry consensus, it’s estimated that it will cost $10 million in order for California to fully legalize marijuana.
Commercial medical marijuana sales are estimated at $1.5 billion per year but are rapidly growing, according to Medical Marijuana Business Daily. Looking forward, projected sales are $3 billion in 2014 and $6 billion in 2016.
The New Yorker has featured so many brilliant covers. But this one, by Jack Hunter, may be my favorite. Ever.
Brooks is saying that the goal should be to rig the system against them and to do almost anything that is required to rig it that way. What makes this even more foolish is that Morsi and his allies were already failing. It would have been only a matter of time until they would have been defeated at the next election, and then there would have been no question that they had been rejected on the grounds that their tenure had indeed been a disaster. The coup allow Morsi and his supporters to claim that they have been robbed, and it is unlikely that they are going to take that lying down. That is a recipe for continued strife and instability, which are exactly what Egypt can least afford.
I just crash landed at SFO. Tail ripped off. Most everyone seems fine. I'm ok. Surreal... (at @flySFO) [pic] — https://t.co/E6Ur1XEfa4
— David Eun (@Eunner) July 6, 2013
By Mark Memmot, The Two Way @ npr.org, July 6, 2013
Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., at a firing range in Nevada earlier this week. Her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, was behind her.
Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords [....] has been in the news this week as she and her husband Mark Kelly take their "Americans for Responsible Solutions" campaign around the nation.
Videos of Giffords and Kelly at firing ranges have gotten wide play on news outlets. In this one, you can see Giffords herself firing a handgun. Both she and her husband are gun owners (and were before she was shot) and say they continue to enjoy shooting.
Their campaign aims to reduce gun violence by pushing lawmakers to close the so-called gun show and Internet loopholes that allow weapons to be purchased without background checks. They also want the databases that get checked to include more information about individuals who have mental issues [....]
I laughed when I saw the headline but was much more somber after reading the article....
From a purely political point of view, then, this was a bad news story but not a big news story. / To the hundreds of millions of people around the world for whom Israel news is religious news as well as political news, it was something else. The Jewish Temple is not just another historical building, and any discussion about rebuilding it isn’t just another political story.
Attorney Lynne Stewart aggressively defended alleged terrorists, making her a target of President George W. Bush’s “war on terror.” After 9/11, she was prosecuted for violating special security rules for dealing with a client – and is now dying of cancer in federal prison, denied compassionate release, reports William Boardman.