By George Soros, for the New York Review of Books, September 15, 2011
....There is some similarity between the euro crisis and the subprime crisis that caused the crash of 2008. In each case a supposedly riskless asset—collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), based largely on mortgages, in 2008, and European government bonds now—lost some or all of their value.
By Barry Meier, New York Times, September 15/16, 2011
In a troubling development for people with all-metal artificial hips, a registry that tracks orthopedic implants in Britain reported on Thursday that the failure rate of the devices was increasing.....
While the patients tracked by the British registry are not in the United States, doctors and patients here pay close attention to the registry’s findings because no such body exists in this country, where there is far greater use of artificial hips and knees...
By the New York Times editorial board, published September 16/17, 2011
Five years after the United Nations Security Council ordered it to halt, Iran is still enriching uranium and refusing to come clean about its nuclear program. Tehran is clearly hoping the world will either forget or acquiesce. That would be very dangerous.
The latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency is a chilling reminder of both the scale of Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the lengths it will go to cover up the truth....
Alternative title: "Introducing the Great Purge of 2011".
....I have deep patience for dickishness. I don't mind a bit of rough and tumble. Politics is a contact sport....
So being a dick is sometimes okay, within reason, which is why I've never concerned myself with it. But of course, the year-long Obama-rox/Obama-sux flamewar has now dragged me into community moderation, and my patience has run dry. I'm now itching the ban the fuck out of the biggest dicks on the site.
By Dexter Filkins, The New Yorker, September 19, 2011 (available free online now.)
Syed Saleem Shahzad wrote aggressively about Pakistan’s military. But is that why he was killed?
My comment: Highly recommended. Despite what their blurb suggests, in investigating Shahzad's story, and trying to get across what he learned, Filkins ended up doing a very good job of suggesting where the US is at with Pakistan right now and how the administration (as well as some Pakistani leaders) is sort of stuck between a rock and hard place.
A few pictures to remind myself and others that might tend Amerocentric that 9/11 is not just an American memory. One of the specific targets was the World Trade Center. Not to mention that civilian aviation worldwide would never be the same.
In Tapes, Candid Talk by Young Kennedy Widow
By Janny Scott, New York Times, September 11/12, 2011
....Mrs. Kennedy recalls in an oral history scheduled to be released Wednesday, 47 years after the interviews were conducted....The seven-part interview conducted in early 1964....is being published as a book and an audio recording. In it, the young widow speaks with Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr....
Some of the juicier excerpts from the above article for a taste:
By Somini Sengupta, New York Times, September 11/12, 2011
He claims to be 21 years old, a student of software engineering in Tehran who reveres Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and despises dissidents in his country.....
The fruits of his labor are believed to have been used to tap into the online communications of as many as 300,000 unsuspecting Iranians this summer. What’s more, he punched a hole in an online security mechanism that is trusted by millions of Internet users all over the world.
By Jonathan Dienst and Jonathan Prokupecz, NBC News, September 11, 2011
...."We'll come back U.S.A. One day only 11/9/2011," says one message, featuring a photo of Osama bin Laden, using the date/month formula to reference Sept. 11.
"We'll come to u white house sooooooooooon," says another....
So What Happened?
By Josh Marshall, TPM Editors' Blog, September 10, 2011, 1:29am
My note: If you check out Marshall's first link in the post, you will read that those mug shots were acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request.
By Kevin Sack, New York Times, September 8/9, 2011
A federal appellate court in Richmond, Va., on Thursday threw out a pair of cases challenging the constitutionality of President Obama’s 2010 health care law, ruling for varying reasons that the plaintiffs did not have legal standing to sue.
In the process, however, two of the three judges on the panel volunteered that they would have upheld the law, known as the Affordable Care Act, if they had been able to rule on the substance of the cases.
By Nicholas Wade, New York Times, September 8/9/2011
An apelike creature with human features, whose fossil bones were discovered recently in a South African cave, is being greeted by paleoanthropologists as a likely watershed in the understanding of human evolution.
Voice of America's Breaking News blog, September 9, 2011
Former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson says he will not leave Cuba until he is allowed to see U.S. contractor Alan Gross, who is serving 15 years in prison for crimes against the communist state.
By Paul Eckert in Wilkes Barre, Reuters, September 9, 2011
The Susquehanna River, swollen by rainfall from the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee, reached record levels in Pennsylvania on Friday and submerged some towns amid worry that flood waters had been turned toxic by swamped sewage processing plants....
By Anthony Summer and Robbyn Swan,
(authors of "The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden,")
Salon.com, September 8, 2011
Two sentences in a 9/11 Commission document, previously withheld from the public but released in recent weeks, offer a tantalizing glimpse of a nugget of intelligence that has long been concealed from the public.......They used the codewords Teresa and Sally....The pair discussed -- improbably -- sending "skirts" to "Sally."....
