Paul Krugman at The New York Times writes—One Reform, Indivisible:
I guess that after all the years of vilification it was predictable that Republican leaders would still fail to understand the principles behind health reform and that this would hamper their ability to craft an effective political response as the reform’s implementation draws near. But their rudest shock is yet to come. You see, this thing isn’t going to be the often-predicted “train wreck.” On the contrary, it’s going to work.
Robert Fisk at
The Independent writes—
How some ordinary Egyptians became ‘malicious terrorists’:
A military coup, millions of enraged supporters of the democratically elected but deposed dictator – reports that indicate well over 1,000 Muslim Brotherhood sympathisers slaughtered by the security police – and what were we told by the authorities yesterday? That Egypt was subject to “a malicious terrorist plot”.
The language speaks for itself. Not just a common or garden “terrorist” plot – but a “terrorist” plot so terrible that it is “malicious”. Naturally, the government acquired this use of the “terrorist” word from Bush and Blair, another Western contribution to Arab culture. But it goes further. The country, we are now informed, is at the mercy of “extremist forces who want to create war”. You would think, on hearing this, that most of the dead these past six weeks were soldiers and policemen, whereas in fact most were unarmed demonstrators.
Leonard Pitts Jr. at the
Miami Herald writes—
Elysium: A metaphor for our times:
The world is a ghetto.
That is, yes, the title of an old song by War. It is also the reality presented by Elysium, the new film by director Neill Blomkamp. It posits a ruined Earth in the year 2154, overcome by overcrowding, disease and environmental and economic collapse. Los Angeles is a dusty brown shantytown where people live on top of one another like some favela in Rio.
Then the camera takes you up to the orbiting habitat to which the wealthy have decamped, Elysium. It’s Latin for paradise, and that’s what this is, assuming your idea of paradise is a McMansion with a manicured lawn the size of a city park where you live a life of vaguely sterile luxury.
Blomkamp has given us a tale perfect for these political times. It is an allegory of income disparity, a cautionary saga of what happens when more and more resources are concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.
Additional pundits can be found below the fold.
Tom Hayden at the Los Angeles Times explains—how to end California's prison hunger strike:
The courts have already ruled that California prisons don't meet constitutionally guaranteed standards. Does the governor really want a legacy of inmates starving to death on his watch? [...]
The strikers, for their part, must accept that some of their "core demands," including the call for a far more humane approach to incarceration in the state's Special Housing Units, are nonstarters with the Brown administration. The governor, for his part, should immediately ask his representatives to begin delivering on the strikers so-called supplemental demands. These include such measures as fixes to prison air conditioning systems, fresher food and the right to a weekly phone call. The strikers have also called for reopening the Pelican Bay visitors' center and allowing visits of four to six hours on weekends and holidays for family members, who often must travel hundreds of miles to Pelican Bay. And they want the right to take one photograph per year, to purchase more art supplies from the canteen, to sell or give away artwork and to have more access to educational courses and current books.d
Amir Oren at
Haaretz writes—
Israel's nuclear ambiguity no longer serves a purpose:
The willful blindness of both the White House and the U.S. Congress has eliminated the main reason for Israel’s policy of nuclear ambiguity, which has been attributed to the fear of automatic penalties that are enshrined in U.S. legislation. When the president and the heads of the legislative branch have the will, legal loopholes are invoked.
The Americans live with a nuclear India and Pakistan. These states have eliminated the ambiguity regarding “what,” if not the ambiguity over “how many,” “where” and “range, magnitude and precision.”
When the balance of interests supports restraint, that is the policy chosen. The partial lifting of the veil of ambiguity is not the same as disarmament; it merely stops the transparent game of hide-and-seek.
Aura Bogado at
The Nation writes—
White Is the New White:
Orange Is the New Black defenders repeatedly tell me that Kerman is invested in prison reform. She very well might be. But the problem here lies in the fact that her investment in the issue has been repaid through a very different kind of investment in her by book publishers and budding media empires like Netflix. I don’t necessarily doubt that Kerman wants to see a change in the criminal justice system—just like I don’t doubt that she’s made a cottage industry for herself doing so. This started about a decade ago, when Kerman began selling “Free Piper” T-shirts through Paypal. As a bestselling author who’s sold the rights to stories of women that aren’t even hers, she’s profited from the criminalization of black and brown women who are disproportionately targeted for prison cages.
But most often, Orange Is the New Black fans tell me I need to give the series a real chance. If I can just get through the first two episodes, I’ll be content by episode three. And so I watched and cringed through six whole episodes, called it quits and hope to never again see another one in my entire life. With very little exception, I saw wildly racist tropes [...]
Matt Rothschild, the editor of the 104-year-old
Progressive magazine talks about how
Walker’s Cop Nabs Me for Being a Reporter at an ongoing protest in Madison, Wisconsin:
I was hoping to get a picture of Block as she entered the elevator, the kind of picture that has been taken many times in the last couple of weeks.
But the police officers said to stand back. I said I was a journalist, the editor of The Progressive magazine.
“You can’t be here,” they said.
“I’m with the press,” I said. “I have a right to be here.”
Whereupon, without a warning that I’d be arrested, Officer S. B. Mael grabbed my hands and put them behind my back, cuffed them, and said, “Obstruction.”
Jamie Fellner at
The New York Times writes—
Graying Prisoners:
MORE and more United States prisons resemble nursing homes with bars, where the elderly and infirm eke out shrunken lives. Prison isn’t easy for anyone, but it is especially punishing for those afflicted by the burdens of old age. Yet the old and the very old make up the fastest-growing segment of the prison population.
Related
Today, the New York State Board of Parole is scheduled to decide whether to give medical parole to Anthony D. Marshall, who was convicted of stealing from his mother, Brooke Astor. Mr. Marshall is 89 and suffers from Parkinson’s and congestive heart failure. His lawyers say he cannot stand or dress himself. He is one of at least 26,100 men and women 65 and older incarcerated in state and federal prisons, up 62 percent in just five years.
Robert A G Monks, at
Truthout writes—
Is Divesting Activism?
Divestment campaigns, like boycotts, are what we think of first when we hear of corporate misdeeds. Don't put your money into something that is harming people, the Earth, etc. Anti-apartheid divestment efforts began in the 1960s and picked up momentum in the 1980s. Now, there are student movements forming to encourage divestment from fossil fuel companies. Nelson Mandela once told me that while efforts like this were invaluable in bringing down apartheid, he also appreciated the companies who didn't leave South Africa because people needed the jobs. It's a Catch-22: to walk away or to stay and try to change things.