Pondering the big Picture
HARD ROAD AHEAD Lots of mail now about what the vote in Massachusetts meant. My take, for what it’s worth, is that it is part and parcel with the election of Obama in 2008. The voters in this country are increasingly getting scared. They may not mind that we will tax the golden goose a…
Groundhog Day in Afghanistan
The daily grind of aid work in Afghanistan mirrors the country’s broader inertia. More than eight years after the U.S. invasion, the international community is still struggling to break out of a seemingly endless cycle of government crises and move toward a stable government — and a clear path home. The international conference on Afghanistan…
CIA operative retracts claims of Torture
Well, it’s official now: John Kiriakou, the former CIA operative who affirmed claims that waterboarding quickly unloosed the tongues of hard-core terrorists, says he didn’t know what he was talking about. Kiriakou, a 15-year veteran of the agency’s intelligence analysis and operations directorates, electrified the hand-wringing national debate over torture in December 2007 when he…
Oliver Stone ignites controversy
Oliver Stone will attempt to humanize Adolph Hitler in his new, upcoming 10-part documentary series, “The Secret History of the United States,” right? That’s evidently the plan as reported last week by The Independent. Stone apparently wants to “liberalize” Hitler and to finger U.S. corporations for their role in the rise of National Socialism in…
Avatar vs. Confucius in China
26 January 2010 ImageHarmony is fine, but China’s moviegoers prefer action What do you do, as a Chinese film board, when the Hollywood science fiction film Avatar smashes Chinese box office records in its first three weeks in theaters, when online chat-sites are buzzing about the uncanny parallels between the fictional film plot – of…
North & South Korea /developing story
News Asia-Pacific North and South Korea exchange fire North Korea declared a ‘no-sail zone’ near the disputed sea border on Tuesday [AFP] North and South Korea have exchanged artillery fire near a disputed sea border off the west coast of the peninsula, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted government officials as saying. South Korea’s presidential…
IT’S OFFICIAL! ‘AVATAR’ SINKS ‘TITANIC’
January 26, 2010 @ 2:54pm The official numbers are in. So Twentieth Century Fox reports that AVATAR has earned $1.859 billion in worldwide revenue in just 39 days. It took place on Monday when James Cameron’s big budget 3D technopic passed the long-standing worldwide revenue record held by his other epic film Titanic of $1.843…
HUMAN TRAFFIC: Epic Tale of Underworld
Book Review In Patrick Radden Keefe’s The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream we finally have a satisfying, comprehensive account of the Golden Venture debacle and its place in the larger story of people smuggling and US immigration policy. In fact, it is not only satisfying; it is excellent….
West Coast Wasteland
The state’s unemployment rate stands at more than 12 percent, and in some poorer counties it’s in the 25 percent range. In Los Angeles, that number is 12.2 percent. “It boggles the mind,” says LA’s mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa. “Not since the Depression have we had numbers this bad.” To make matters worse, in an attempt…