The recent crisis in Egypt makes clear what many have known for a few years now. Al Jazeera is the best major media source. The reporting is a little more fearless, the exposés are a little more in-depth, the feature stories and interviews are a little more thoughtful than all the other guys. If you’ve got to pick just one media outlet, you’d be a stubborn mule indeed not to pick Al Jazeera. It is more serious than CNN, more genuinely global than the New York Times, and more complicated than the BBC. This is not a matter for serious debate anymore. It is a basic fact.
I was walking to the station this morning, and heard a rush of steps in the old creekbed next to the road. I looked over expecting a beaver and saw a startled doe, which was looking back at me across the swale. "Hello, deer," I said, then realized how odd that sounded. I'll be glad when my wife rejoins me next week. I find myself talking to plants, the TV, the sink.
MADISON, Wis. -- The executive board president of the Wisconsin Law Enforcement Association has issued a statement on the organization's website expressing regret for the endorsement of Gov. Scott Walker in the governor's race.In a post dated Feb. 16, Tracy Fuller writes, "I am going to make an effort to speak for myself, and every member of the Wisconsin State Patrol when I say this … I specifically regret the endorsement of the Wisconsin Trooper's Association for Gov. Scott Walker.
In between the Wisconsin protest coverage, Pale Rider and A Fistful of Dollars, I watched the ATP Marseille final, in which world #4 Robin Söderling came back from losing a close first set tiebreak to defeat world #21 Marin Čilić 6-7 (8-10), 6-3, 6-3. I know sportswriters try to vary the terminology, but I was surprised to read this headline in the UK Mirror:
By Donal on Sat, 02/19/2011 - 12:41pm | World Affairs
In this half hour interview, Dmitry Orlov once again compares the collapse of the Soviet Empire with what he sees happening to the American Empire. His proposal that we are near collapse may seem outrageous, but the reasons he gives are not easy to dismiss.
History repeats itself: food riots are breaking out across the poorer nations, the Middle East is in turmoil and Brent crude has passed the $100 mark – 2011 is opening just like 2008 did.
Modern man, the kind with the 1400 cc brain, is said to have been around for about 200,000 years. For the first 190,000 years however, not much of note happened, or at least that we know about. Tools got better - sharper spears and axes - but in general our remote ancestors went through life hunting and gathering. Little seems to have happened, for early man was completely occupied in feeding himself and, of course, procreation. Researchers think that in all these years the world's population never got to more than 15 million.
Already set to reclaim the #1 world ranking from Kim Clijsters, Caroline Wozniacki easily won the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championship today, winning in the final 6-1, 6-3 over Svetlana Kuznetsova.
I started reading the Econbrowser blog because it's peak oil-aware founder JD Hamilton posted frequently on The Oil Drum. At some point, Hamilton brought in the very technical Menzie Chinn as co-blogger. Yesterday, in Analogy Watch: "Cairo has come to Wisconsin"? Chinn repudiated the claim Paul Ryan had made on MSNBC:
Turns out, it's not just the fake sweetener in Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke that might cause cancer; it's also the coloring agent. The cans these beverages come in aren't so healthy, either.
AMY GOODMAN: Cecile Richards, the Republican attack on women’s reproductive rights coincides with the release of this series of undercover videos aimed at discrediting your organization, Planned Parenthood. The campaign has been compared to a similar attack on the community group ACORN in 2008 that relied on deceptively edited videos secretly recorded by James O’Keefe. One undercover recorded video was recorded in New York, appears to show a worker at Planned Parenthood counseling a male client and a young woman on how to get abortions for child prostitutes.
- The Canadian-born Bieber never plans on becoming an American citizen. "You guys are evil," he says with a laugh. "Canada's the best country in the world. We go to the doctor and we don't need to worry about paying him, but here, your whole life, you're broke because of medical bills. My bodyguard's baby was premature, and now he has to pay for it. In Canada, if your baby's premature, he stays in the hospital as long as he needs to, and then you go home."
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 8, 2010 – Inflation is a significant measurement for the economic health of countries around the world, but rates are often reported weeks after data is collected. To address this problem, Professors Roberto Rigobon and Alberto Cavallo at MIT Sloan School of Management have launched the Billion Prices Project (http://bpp.mit.edu), the first Website to publish daily price indexes and provide real-time inflation estimates around the world.
CBS News correspondent Lara Logan is recovering in an American hospital this week after being sexually assaulted and beaten by a mob in Egypt's Tahrir Squ
By Donal on Tue, 02/15/2011 - 4:20pm | World Affairs
I thought oil was supposed to be fungible, so I was curious as to why a barrel of Brent could be selling in the low $100s while WTI was around $85/barrel. That sixteen dollar spread is some sort of record.
Today, response to Walker's bill has been… unfavorable. About ten thousand currently surround Walker's capitol office and are streaming into the dome. Walker should be extra-worried to know that the Super Bowl Champion Green Bay Packers and its former stars, the most important political lobby in the state, have come out against him.
On Capitol Hill, the Democrats and Republicans may no longer play cards and drink together, but that does not seem to stop them from working together to shift tax burdens down the income ladder even when it violates their promises on the campaign trail.
Grover Norquist calls bipartisanship the political equivalent of date rape. But there is one group that President Obama, many congressional Democrats, and all congressional Republicans ganged up on in December -- the working poor.
AMY GOODMAN: And how would you compare the cuts to the more than 200 federal programs involving social services and education to what we’re seeing at the Pentagon?
Flipping between French and Tunisian colloquial Arabic, Amamou, a web entrepreneur, went on to describe the function of anonymous identities in our life, as they are behind everything from great works of art and literature, like Kelila and Demna and 1001 nights, to usual everyday objects like chairs and tables.
“There are cost pressures from virtually everywhere,” said Wesley R. Card, the chief executive of the Jones Group, whose brands include Nine West and Anne Klein. After trying to keep retail prices flat or even lower during the recession, Jones says prices for its brands will climb 15 to 20 percent by autumn.
