Comment

Comment by Chris on January 2, 2014 at 9:23am

I think the president of Uruguay is a hero on the national stage.

Comment by doone on January 1, 2014 at 3:25pm

Uruguay

Andres Stapff / Reuters

A woman is soaked at Montevideo financial district in Uruguay on New Year’s Eve.

To mark the last working day of the year, workers throw water at people and discard old calendars.

Comment by doone on January 1, 2014 at 3:24pm

AP Photo/Biswaranjan Rout

A sand sculpture to celebrate the new year created by sand artist Sudarshan Pattnaik at the Puri sea beach near the eastern Indian city of Bhubaneswar, India.

Comment by doone on December 21, 2013 at 8:22pm

Comment by Ali on December 18, 2013 at 6:37am

Saudi Arabia Will Go It Alone
by Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz al Saud , Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Britain

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/18/opinion/saudi-arabia-will-go-it-a...

Comment by doone on December 17, 2013 at 1:58pm

Why Do We Call It “Marijuana”?

DEC 16 2013 @ 7:00PM

It was “cannabis” throughout the 19th century. Then came the Mexican Revolution:

Following the upheaval of the war, scores of Mexican peasants migrated to US border states, bringing with them their popular form of intoxication, what they termed “mariguana.” Upon arrival, they encountered anti-immigrant fears throughout the U.S. Southwest – prejudices that intensified after the Great Depression. Analysts say this bigotry played a key role in instituting the first marijuana laws – aimed at placing social controls on the immigrant population. 

In an effort to marginalize the new migrant population, the first anti-cannabis laws were targeted at the term “marijuana,” says Amanda Reiman, a policy manager at the Drug Policy Alliance. Scholars say it’s no coincidence that the first U.S. cities to outlaw pot were located in border states. It is widely believed that El Paso, Texas, was the first US city to ban cannabis, when in approved a measure in 1914 prohibiting the sale or possession of the drug. …

But nobody played a larger role in cementing the word in the national consciousness than Harry Anslinger, director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930 to 1962. An outspoken critic of the drug, Anslinger set out in the 1930s to place a federal ban on cannabis, embarking on a series of public appearances across the country. Anslinger is often referred to as the great racist of the war on drugs, says John Collins, coordinator of the LSE IDEAS International Drug Policy Project in London.

Collins is not certain if Anslinger himself was a bigot. “But he knew that he had to play up people’s fears in order to get federal legislation passed,” Collins said. “So when talking to senators with large immigrant populations, it very much helped to portray drugs as something external, something that is invading the U.S. He would use the term ‘marijuana’ knowing that it sounds Hispanic, it sounds foreign.”

(Image: Poster for Marihuana [The Marijuana Story], 1950)

Comment by doone on December 14, 2013 at 1:13pm

HOW DID THE 1 PERCENT GET AHEAD SO FAST?

Cass R. Sunstein at Bloomberg:

From 2009 to 2012, the U.S. experienced a significant economic recovery, in which average real income growth jumped by 6 percent. That’s the good news. The bad news is that almost all of that increase -- 95 percent - - was enjoyed by those in the top 1 percent of the income distribution.

To appreciate this remarkable finding, set out in an important paper by University of California economist Emmanuel Saez, we need to add some context. From 2007 to 2009, the recession produced a 17.4 percent decline in average real income -- the largest drop since the Great Depression. Every income class was hit hard, but in percentage terms, those at the top of the economic ladder suffered the biggest decreases.

During the recovery -- from 2009 to 2012 -- members of the top 1 percent have enjoyed a big boost in their average income: 31.4 percent. As Saez shows, this figure almost wiped out the loss from the recession, returning the top 1 percent to essentially where it was in 2007.

By contrast, the remaining 99 percent saw measly growth of 0.4 percent, about a 30th of the 11.6 percent loss they experienced in the recession. By the end of 2012, the bottom 99 percent wasn’t close to where it was in 2007.

More here

- See more at: http://www.3quarksdaily.com/#sthash.5G4cwzmK.dpuf

Comment by Chris on December 9, 2013 at 7:19pm

Original Article Whose Sarin?

Democracy Now

Seymour Hersh: Obama "Cherry-Picked" Intelligence on Syrian Chemical Attack to Justify U.S. Strike.

[Contains a video that I wasn't able to embed.]

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh joins us to discuss his new article casting doubt on the veracity of the Obama administration’s claims that only the Assad regime could have carried out the chemical attacks in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta earlier this year. Writing in the London Review of Books, Hersh argues that the Obama administration "cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad." The administration failed to disclose it knew Syrian rebels in the al-Nusra Front had the ability to produce chemical weapons. Evidence obtained in the days after the attack was also allegedly distorted to make it appear it was gathered in real time.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

More here

Comment by Davy on December 5, 2013 at 11:31am

While the western half of Ukraine was under the Austro-Hungarian empire their language was tolerated. Whilst in the eastern half controlled by the Russians their language was not tolerated and they were forced to adopted the Russian language also Russians moved freely in to the country! That is why the east is more sympathetic to Russia than the western half!

Comment by doone on December 5, 2013 at 8:07am

UKRAINE DREAMS OF EUROPE

Sophie Pinkham at n+1:

“Ukraine” means “on the border,” and it has always been stuck in the middle. Its current territory was split between the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires, and held some of the largest Jewish enclaves in Europe. People in Western Ukraine spoke Ukrainian, Russian, German, Romanian, Hungarian, and Yiddish, and traces of this heritage are still evident. Crimea, Ukraine’s southern peninsula, was part of the Ottoman Empire until Catherine the Great seized it, and it still houses a Russian naval base. Crimea still had a sizeable Tatar population in 1944, when Stalin deported the Tatars to starve to death in Central Asia (in the 1990s, the children of the survivors returned). Stalin had allowed the Ukrainians to starve to death at home, in the famine of 1932 and 1933. Ukraine was one of the bloodiest battlegrounds of World War II, with its Jews shot and dumped into mass graves—many of which are still marked only as the graves of “Soviet heroes.” Today, many Ukrainians speak both Ukrainian and Russian; some speak surzhik, a blend of the two languages that varies according to place and mood. Eastern Ukraine is much more sympathetic to Russia, after two centuries of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union (with the associated entrenched corruption). Western Ukraine, on the other hand, has a vivid memory of being part of “Europe,” and they want very badly to be part of it again; many Western Ukrainians seem to feel that they are Europeans who have been held hostage for decades, held back from the European destiny that ought to be theirs. Rakhiv, a tiny town in Western Ukraine, boasts a spot that someone once declared “the geographic center of Europe”; this is still a point of great pride. Tourists come and take pictures near the sign, as men in fedoras drive horse-drawn carts down the mountain roads.

more here.

- See more at: http://www.3quarksdaily.com/#sthash.mL85ebfL.dpuf

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