Iran’s ambitions, which have cast a long shadow over the greater Middle East, may serve as a common bond keeping a frail peace process intact despite threats that have arisen even before the negotiations open Thursday at the State Department.
Iran’s nuclear program and spreading political influence through a swath of Sunni Arab countries have alarmed the region’s kings and elected autocrats for years.
ONOZ! Not the kings and autocrats!
As the clock ticks down…
Blue wire? Or red wire? Which one do I cut–BOOM!
…on predominantly Shiite Iran’s nuclear program, though, it becomes more urgent for Israel and its Arab neighbors to achieve peace and face together the shared threat to their security and political stability.
The dynamic brings an “enemy of my enemy” calculation to this round of talks, binding the Jewish state’s security interests to those of its Sunni Arab neighbors more tightly than in the past.
You don’t have to be an Iranian citizen to recognize that Iran is run by scary assholes. But could not the same be said by any other citizen in the Middle East, Israel included? And, ya know, it’s funny — just yesterday the President Who Cannot Be Doubted (except in the most ludicrous ways) announced the withdrawal of combat forces from a Middle Eastern country that some nation run by a religious zealot invaded illegally, destabilized, set up a torture prison, divvied up winnings to corporate pals, and threw into civil war. You’d think that might have some influence on the political climate of the region.
But let us not re-litigate the past. Let us move forward to a bright new tomorrow. “Turn the page,” as it was recently said.
Netanyahu will need Obama’s support if he decides to undertake a military strike against Iran, either before or after he carries it out. His willingness to stick with peace talks, which Obama has called a priority, would win him goodwill in what has so far been a stormy relationship between the two men.
Here you were, thinking that the job of U.S. Secretary of State was to craft foreign policy, mediate international conflicts, serve national interests, develop relations with foreign countries, and put a kinder, gentler face on the American Empire.
But you were wrong. WaPo knows it’s all about the hairdo.
RSA Animate has created an excellent piece of animation based on David Harvey’s lecture on the causes of the current global economic meltdown, “Crises of Capitalism.” As a lecture, Harvey’s critique of the various standard explanation for the current crisis and placement of the implosion into a historical context is worth listening to on its own. But RSA makes it more lively with visual commentary. Very humorous, even if they use some stock political cartoon clichés (Monopoly board, fat capitalists) that I spent the last ten years trying to avoid.
During this election cycle, Arizona politicians are touting the potential dangers of illegal immigration. Gov. Jan Brewer is one of the loudest voices.
She has made several statements to the national media, the validity of which CBS 5 Investigates could not confirm. The governor told one media outlet that almost all illegal immigrants are bringing drugs across the border. U.S. Border Patrol officials said that statement is false.
Brewer also said law enforcement officials have found decapitated bodies in the desert. Calls to all of Arizona’s border county medical examiners revealed no decapitated bodies have been reported to them.
A look at data from the FBI shows crime in Arizona is actually down. Murders in Phoenix have dropped by 50 percent since 2003. The violent crime rate across the state has dropped every year since at least 2004. Even the number of illegal border crossers is down. Border Patrol numbers show they are arresting half as many illegal immigrants as they did in 2004.
U.S. Attorney for Arizona, Dennis Burke, told CBS 5 Investigates, “If you’re not into drug trafficking and you’re not into human smuggling, you’re going to be safe. This is a safe place to live.”
Well, geez, what if I WANT to smuggle drugs and humans over the border? What about MY safety?
Meanwhile, Talk of the Nation gave way too much credence to the “anchor baby” hysteria driving the GOP and Dem wingnuts to demand a revision of the 14th Amendment. To be fair, the main guest was a thoughtful and patient opponent of such a revision, and most callers gave great arguments against it. But host Neal Conan’s “objectivity” failed to fact-check the reality behind the “anchor baby” term or psuedo-phenomenon. “Well, gee, one caller said she sees illegal aliens dropping babies all the time, so it must be true.” C’mon, man — prepare! Call bullshit when you see it! Sadly, this is probably the best treatment of the subject one can expect from the major news outlets.
Sigh. Same shit, different decade. Twenty years ago, when I was indeed 20, Time Magazine ran a cover story on “twenty-somethings” — the first I had heard the term used — musing on the same questions. Back then there was much consternation among Baby Boomers and older generations that Gen Xers were a bunch of slackers, wearing ripped jeans and listening to Grunge™ music (a mostly white middle class stereotype then; other anxieties were visited upon the HipHop Generation of black youth). Same questions. At least the author of this new iteration acknowledges as much:
It’s a development that predates the current economic doldrums, and no one knows yet what the impact will be — on the prospects of the young men and women; on the parents on whom so many of them depend; on society, built on the expectation of an orderly progression in which kids finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and eventually retire to live on pensions supported by the next crop of kids who finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and on and on. The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain untethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life.
Emphasis mine, highlighted to ask a simple question: Have you not noticed the gradual withering away of the middle class over the last 30-40 years? The diminished buying power of real wages? The loss of manufacturing jobs? The ridiculous cost of a higher education? The economic collapse of the Great Lake states? The third world poverty conditions of most of the southern (west and east) of the continental United States? All of these predate “the current economic doldrums” — indeed, one might suggest that they are factors contributing to them.
Economic factors are lightly addressed by this article, but much more attention is paid to sociological debates about “emerging adulthood”; a proposed protected status for people in their twenties (eek!); neuroscience of young adults,;”helicopter parents” stifling maturation; the privileged status of twenty-somethings “delaying” adulthood (contrasted with impoverished black youth who have not had the “luxury”); and so on. Some of this is interesting, even accurate material — certainly the neuroscience raises interesting questions — and I like the proposal “to start rethinking our definition of normal development and to create systems of education, health care and social supports that take the new stage into account.” That at least is a start to addressing fundamental economic and social inequalities that affect most young adults, regardless of individual paces of maturation.
Yet the article begins with a set of assumptions about adulthood and growing up that it takes as teleological endpoints, as goals for which all people in their youth must aspire. As a married father of two with a house and a professional career, I have obviously shared those aspirations; one could perhaps posit them as a “norm.” But shouldn’t we view these assumptions with some skepticism? There is an implication that if one has not conformed to certain social expectations, one has not “grown up.” The value of being childless (especially when you don’t want children), of being single, of refusing marriage, of contributing to society in other ways — these you will not find appreciated in this article. If they were, perhaps this issue of delayed “adulthood” would not seem so dire.
Or perhaps trivial. Are there not other values we can ascribe to maturity? It is really hard to read the news today and not think that adults are behaving no better than children in the playground. Albeit with deadlier weapons and more powerful instruments to oppress, manipulate, and exploit. The young adults quoted in this article who express a desire to simply “enjoy life” seem to have their shit together much more compared to idiots who blow themselves up in pizzerias or wage illegal wars for corporate profit. At the least, they are not increasing the amount of suffering in the world.
