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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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By Christina Anderson and John F. Burns, New York Times, December 11, 2010
...The country’s foreign minister called the blasts a terrorist attack, and an e-mail to news organizations minutes before the blasts seemed to link them to anger over anti-Islamic cartoons and the war in Afghanistan....
By Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, Vanity Fair, January 2011 issue
Prescription drugs kill some 200,000 Americans every year. Will that number go up, now that most clinical trials are conducted overseas—on sick Russians, homeless Poles, and slum-dwelling Chinese—in places where regulation is virtually nonexistent, the F.D.A. doesn’t reach, and “mistakes” can end up in pauper’s graves? The authors investigate the globalization of the pharmaceutical industry, and the U.S. Government’s failure to rein in a lethal profit machine.
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY, New York Times, December 10/11, 2010
an in-depth piece for their "Above the Law" Series about corruption in Russia
Efforts to suppress an opposition party in Siberia seem to underscore how laws intended to guarantee free and fair elections carry little weight in Russia.
Sample line:
“They say, if I don’t end my campaign, they will kill me,” she said.
There is a related sidebar article, also by Levy: Wide Swings in Turnout a Clue to Fraud
with an associated chart and map
a slideshow: A Puppet Party Rebels and a video
(links to all on first link.)
By Michael Grunwald for Time Magazine (which has had excellent coverage on the high speed rail stimulus projects topic in the past,) Dec. 09, 2010.
For more see
DOT Redirects High-Speed Rail Money from Ohio and Wisconsin, by Eric Jaffe for Infrastructurist.com, December 10, 2010.
Occidental Petroleum also says it will sell its operations in Argentina for $2.5 billion and increase its dividends to shareholders. It will also bring its ownership of the Elk Hills Power Plant in California to 100%.
...."There are some good domestic oil reserves out there, but some companies already involved can't exploit them as much as they would like because they don't have the cash," said Brian Youngberg, an oil analyst with Edward Jones and Co. in St. Louis. "Occidental was well positioned to acquire some of that acreage to accelerate development and speed up production."....
Christopher Toothaker, A.P., December 9, 2010
....Venezuela has one of Latin America's highest murder rates and the government has stopped releasing complete annual figures, making arriving at an exact figure difficult.
In its annual report, the Provea human rights group said a total of 13,985 people were slain last year, but thousands more in this country of 28 million inhabitants were likely killed. The group accused government officials of using statistical loopholes to "hide the true dimension of the phenomenon."....
By Patrick J. McDonnell and David Zahniser, Los Angeles Times, December 10, 2010
By branding the UTLA as a "roadblock to reform," Villaraigosa launches a campaign that could define his administration.
A.P., December 10, 2010
....Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, said its assessment of two detention centres and three border police stations in the Evros region near Greece's northeastern border with Turkey "documented the harsh and inhumane conditions in which detained migrants are being kept."....
By Floyd Norris, New York Times Business, December 10, 2010
Pensions for government workers could soon come under the kind of scrutiny that led to the demise of private pensions
By Daniel Bardsley, The National, December 10, 2010
The South Korean National Assembly's overwhelming approval for sending special forces troops to the UAE to provide military training is a "turning point" for the Asian nation, a political analyst says.
The proposal was passed on Wednesday by 149 votes to two, another indication of the strengthening ties between the two countries. Under the initiative, 150 troops will travel to the UAE to train Emirati soldiers in counterterrorism and counter-insurgency.....
By David Sapsted, The National, December 10, 2010
BERLIN // Germans are significantly more intolerant towards Islam than other western European nations, suggests an international survey that reflects the growing hostility towards Muslims in Germany.
The University of Munster's poll showed that 58 per cent of western Germans and 62 per cent of easterners had a negative view of Muslims, a dramatically higher percentage than in the other nations surveyed, France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Portugal, where the figures were well below 40 per cent.
The release of the survey, carried out by TNS Emnid, a German research institute, among 1,000 people in each of the countries, coincides with a spate of fire bombings of mosques in Berlin and threats against leaders of the country's four-million-strong Muslim community, which makes up less than four per cent of the population.
The poll was conducted during the summer....
Artappraiser's note: I noticed this story is getting prolonged play in media outlets in Muslim countries. It first broke on December 2 when the study's results were announced--here's the Reuters December 2 piece on it.--but I keep running across new stories on it, like in The National here, and in places like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
By Erik Wasson and Michael O'Brien, The Hill, December 10, 2010
....President Obama is interested in exploring a broad overhaul of the tax code along the lines recommended by the chairmen of his debt commission.
In an interview broadcast Friday on NPR, Obama said he was not endorsing the commission's plan, which would lower individual and corporate tax rates while eliminating $1 trillion in annual tax breaks. But he said he wants to start a bipartisan conversation on the idea next year.....
By Raphael Minder, New York Times, December 9, 2010
MADRID — Spain’s attorney general said Thursday that he would recommend prison sentences of as long as eight years for air traffic controllers found guilty of staging an illegal strike that shut down airports around the country last weekend.....
More detail on what happened in this piece by Susan Crabtree in The Hill--the provision was inserted at the last minute in a spending bill that was passed Wednesday and some didn't know it was there until the vote. Attorney General Eric Holder's reaction in this piece by Charlie Savage for today's The New York Times.
By Jordan Steffen, Tribune Washington Bureau, December 8, 2010
....The measure would have provided the one-time payment to 54 million Social Security recipients in lieu of an annual cost-of-living adjustment....
The bill, which required 60 votes to pass in the Senate, failed on a 53-45 vote late Wednesday afternoon. Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Democratic Sens. Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mark Udall of Colorado and Mark R. Warner of Virginia joined Republicans in voting against the bill...
By Thomas Erdbrink, Washington Post Foreign Service, December 8, 2010
TEHRAN - At least three editors of Iran's leading opposition newspaper, including its editor in chief, were arrested Tuesday in the daily' s newsroom by security forces, journalists working for the paper confirmed Wednesday.
The arrests of the editors and a fourth man associated with the paper followed campus anti-government protests Tuesday, when hundreds of students at several universities marked "Student Day" with demonstrations....
By David Barboza, New York Times, December 9, 2010
....By some industry estimates, as many as 10,000 people in China are doing speculative day trading of American stocks — mostly aggressive young men working the wee hours here, from 9:30 p.m. to 4 a.m., each often trading tens of thousands of shares a day....
By Steven Greenhouse, New York Times Business, December 8, 2010
An unusual split in the labor movement has developed over President Obama’s proposed free-trade pact with South Korea, with two powerful unions backing the deal — a development that experts say will make Congressional ratification far more likely....
By Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times Online, Dec. 9, 2010
A new book by several top al-Qaeda operators - the first of its kind - is critical of the group's leaders, accusing them of acting impetuously and refusing to take advice. The authors suggest al-Qaeda open itself to the Muslim intelligentsia and harmonize its strategy with mainstream Islamic movements. This does not yet indicate a split, but the repercussions could yet be felt along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
Artappraiser's note: I always look for Shahzad's byline at Asia Times. In my opinion, he has excellent sources and really knows his beat. The Times site currently has this piece as its front page headline..
By Cindy Shiner, AllAfrica.com, December 8, 2010
President Laurent Gbagbo of Cote d'Ivoire rebuffed an offer by the United States to save face and become a respected elder statesman of Africa, choosing instead a "path to isolation" by clinging to power, according to senior U.S. officials who spoke by telephone to AllAfrica.
President Barack Obama wrote to Gbagbo on Friday night after attempts to reach him by phone were unsuccessful, prior to Gbagbo's ceremony to swear himself in as president. In the letter, Obama, who was on a plane returning from Afghanistan, reiterated that the United States considered Alassane Ouattara the legitimate winner of Cote d'Ivoire's presidential elections..."President Obama laid out a clear choice:....
by Josh Rogin, The Cable @ Foreignpolicy.com, December 7, 2010
Before the WikiLeaks crisis, the State Department began a new initiative called "21st Century Statecraft", which includes a drive to expand openness and combat government censorship in cyberspace.
As part of that initiative, the State Department announced on Tuesday that it will host UNESCO's World Press Freedom Day event in 2011, meant to champion the free flow of information on the Internet...
By Michael Barbaro, New York Times, December 8, 2010
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Wednesday unleashed a blunt and stinging critique of the federal government’s handling of the economic recovery, saying that lawmakers from both parties have “abdicated their responsibility” in favor of partisan bickering, have vilified success in corporate America and have left the country lagging behind its international competitors.
In a long and sweeping speech, Mr. Bloomberg, a billionaire media mogul, offered a wide-ranging plan for reigniting entrepreneurship and growth, calling for tax cuts for businesses, an overhaul of regulations and investments in job training....
For all practical purposes, Georgia has had a one party state government most of my life. The first half or so, the Democratic Party dominated. That began to change around the time of Reagan. It was not that Republican candidates defeated Democrats in an election. Like those in this story, politicians who won office as Democrats just up and swtiched to Republican after election. It tends to happen in bunches and usually when there is some quid pro quo involved. As far as I know, no politician has suffered or been punished for swtiching. In fact, just the opposite.
This is an excellent case study in state politics by an equally excellent and experience political reporter. Real politics.