The Political Notebook

People that Tumblr Says I Think Are Great (Tumblr is...

Fri, 25 May 2012 09:58:00 -0400

People that Tumblr Says I Think Are Great (Tumblr is right):

This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s...

Fri, 25 May 2012 08:01:02 -0400

This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism.

Prominent Palestinian writer Salameh Kaileh spent three weeks in detention in various Syrian prisons over suspicion that he was handing out leaflets calling for Assad’s downfall. Kaileh described the prisons as a “human slaughterhouses” and “hell on earth.”
UN Sec’y General Ban Ki-Moon told Christiane Amanpour that there is “no Plan B” for Syria at this moment.
The violence in Syria spilled further over the border into Lebanon, igniting clashes throughout the week.
Rival Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a deal that will lead to elections and a unity government in the West Bank and Gaza.
A huge suicide bombing in Sana’a, Yemen, on Monday, killed more than 100 and was claimed by militants connected with Al Qaeda.
The Lockerbie bomber died in Libya on Sunday.
Pakistani Dr. Shakil Afridi, who assisted the CIA in ascertaining bin Laden’s whereabouts, has been sentenced in Pakistan to 33 years for treason.
It’s been another very bloody week in Karachi.
On Tuesday, the Senate appropriations subcommittee on foreign aid voted to cut aid to Pakistan by 58% and threatened further cuts if Pakistan doesn’t reopen supply lines.
At the Chicago summit, NATO leaders decided on a permanent timetable in which Afghan forces will take over combat command in mid-2013 and NATO combat forces will leave by 2014.
US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, will be leaving his post this summer.
Five kidnapped aid workers are apparently being held for ransom in Shahr-e Bozorg, Afghanistan. Negotiations are ongoing.
The State Dept. spent $1800 per student per day in 2010 for its Anti-Terrorism Training program in North Africa, the Middle East and South and Central Asia. The total money spent on programs like this since 9/11 is $1.4b. The State Dept’s Inspector General released a report on these programs for public consumption this week.
Talks over the Iranian nuclear program resumed in Baghdad this week, hitting a snag on negotiations over sanctions.
The military junta in Guinea-Bissau has handed over power to a civilian government.
Dioncounda Traoré, the interim president of Mali, was beset by protesters on Monday, who stormed the presidential palace and beat him unconscious.
A yearlong probe identified 1800 cases of fake parts in US military equipment. A suspected million such fake parts are out there, and 70% of these parts can be traced back to China.
CNAS released a policy report outlining suggestions for reforming the structure and operation of the military.
A 2011 Army memo obtained by Danger Room shows that the Army has had extensive concerns about the long-term health risks associated with the combat burn pit operated at Bagram Airfield. Service-members have been coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with puzzling health problems, most likely associated with exposure to these burn pits. A recent animal study also came to light showing that burn pits not only adversely affects lungs in the short term, but has serious long-term impacts on the immune system.
Two female Army reservists have filed suit in district court to remove the restriction on combat service in the military based “solely on sex,” saying the restriction violates their 5th amendment right to due process.
A new GAO report says that wounded service-members are now waiting an average of a year for their official disability evaluation. This is a big increase, and the wait time has been on the up for the last three years.
Congressional investigators want an explanation within 10 days from the Defense Logistics Agency as to why the military was double-billed and excessively charged to the tune of $750m for food supplies.
One of the owners of a firm involved in propaganda operations for the Pentagon has publicly admitted to creating a series of websites in a misinformation campaign attacking two USA Today journalists who had reported on the contracting company.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the ACLU’s challenge to the 2008 FISA Amendments, the warrantless wiretapping legislation which grants the NSA the power to tap the international phone calls and emails made by US citizens. Just this Tuesday, a Senate panel voted to extend these provisions, which the White House hopes to extend beyond its year-end expiration date.

Photo: Logar province, eastern Afghanistan. During a helicopter transport, US Army medic with the C Company 3/82 Dustoff medevac attends to an Afghan National Army soldier wounded by gunshot. Danish Siddiqui/Reuters.

Why am I a freelance writer?

Thu, 24 May 2012 17:56:38 -0400

freelancerrealtalk:

Picture of the Day: Cairo, Egypt. A boy looks out the window of...

Thu, 24 May 2012 16:47:53 -0400

Picture of the Day: Cairo, Egypt. A boy looks out the window of a building papered with posters for presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh.

Credit: Suhaib Salem/Reuters. Via.

View more Picture of the Day posts. Submit a photo.

Two female Army reservists have filed suit in district court against combat restriction policies.

Thu, 24 May 2012 07:58:47 -0400

Two female Army reservists have filed suit in district court against combat restriction policies.:

Command Sergeant Major Jane Baldwin and Colonel Ellen Haring, are filing suit on the basis that a combat exclusion policy based “solely on sex” violates their due process rights under the Fifth Amendment.

They state that: “This limitation on plaintiffs’ careers restricts their current and future earnings, their potential for promotion and advancement, and their future retirement benefits,” a limitation sometimes referred to as the “brass ceiling” for female service-members.

[MSNBC]

freelancerrealtalk: nedhepburn: Calvin was totally a...

Wed, 23 May 2012 22:11:22 -0400

freelancerrealtalk:

nedhepburn:

Calvin was totally a freelancer.

Truth. We feel you, Calvin.

Picture of the Day: Beirut, Lebanon. Protesters burn tires and...

Wed, 23 May 2012 17:32:25 -0400

Picture of the Day: Beirut, Lebanon. Protesters burn tires and boxes in a demonstration against the kidnapping by the Syrian rebels of a dozen or more Lebanese Shi’a pilgrims in the Syrian city of Aleppo.

Further: Lebanese foreign minister Adnan Mansour has voiced optimism for the pilgrims’ release and indicated that the negotiations were ongoing, but he couldn’t elaborate more. They have been taken captive by Syrian rebels in hopes of leverage in a prisoner exchange for those in Syrian government custody

Credit: Wael Hamzeh/EPA. Via.

View more Picture of the Day posts. Submit a photo.

Terrible Statistic of the Day:

Wed, 23 May 2012 10:55:00 -0400

Terrible Statistic of the Day::

The Justice Department statistics report that 1 in 3 Native American women have been raped or have experienced an attempted rape, a number more than twice the national average.

Incidentally, House Republicans are against a bipartisan-supported provision in the Senate’s version of the Violence Against Women Act which would grant tribal courts greater authority to prosecute who are not Native American for abusing their Native American spouses and domestic partners. They have not included it in the House version of the bill and consider it a unacceptable expansion of tribal authority.

When I'm in hour three of edits:

Wed, 23 May 2012 08:20:23 -0400

freelancerrealtalk:

Always relevant.

Picture of the Day: Karachi, Pakistan. After a rally organized...

Tue, 22 May 2012 17:00:01 -0400

Picture of the Day: Karachi, Pakistan. After a rally organized by the smaller Awami Tehrik Party, but backed by several other parties, eleven people were killed and more than thirty injured in gunfire. Above, a young man, visibly wounded by a gunshot, flees the shooting. Those responsible for opening fire are not yet known. More from Dawn and AFP.

Credit: Faysal Mujeeb/Whitestar. Via.

View more Picture of the Day posts. Submit a photo.

Thanks for sharing your summer reading, y'all...

Tue, 22 May 2012 09:17:16 -0400

Thanks for sharing your summer reading, y'all...:

Lots of worthy and interesting-sounding titles in there - check everyone’s recs out! You all have such smart and varied and super cool reading choices. (And I’m quite impressed by the number of you choosing to tackle Caro’s LBJ biographies… no small feat.)

My own tentative early reading list includes finishing up what I have left of David Cole and James X. Dempsey’s Terrorism and the Constitution and Saadia Toor’s State of Islam: Culture and Cold War Politics in Pakistan. I also have on tap Anthony Shadid’s posthumously released memoir House of Stone andLeila Ahmed’s A Border Passage among about, oh, a trillion others. But I may have to revise and expand the list given all your awesome recommendations.

C’est moi:

Free Morocco’s political prisoners! Mouad Belghouat, who...

Tue, 22 May 2012 08:49:00 -0400

Free Morocco’s political prisoners!

Mouad Belghouat, who raps under the name El Haqed (The Indignant), recently imprisoned for a one year sentence, his trial based on the criticism of security forces in his song “Kilaab Addawla (Dogs of the State).”
Younes Belkhedim, considered the poet of the February 20 Movement, recently sentenced to two years in prison.
Nadia Yassine, noted Islamist activist and opponent of the monarchy.

As well as a great deal of others and amnesty for those previously convicted and sentenced.

Check out Mamfakinch’s article (FR.) on the launch of their campaign to obtain amnesty for Morocco’s political prisoners.

Picture of the Day: Chicago. Joshua Lott, a freelance...

Mon, 21 May 2012 18:21:23 -0400

Picture of the Day: Chicago. Joshua Lott, a freelance photographer for Getty, is arrested while covering demonstrations against the NATO summit on it’s first day.

Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty. Via.

View more Picture of the Day posts. Submit a photo.

The One-Percentification of Higher Ed

Mon, 21 May 2012 15:38:00 -0400

It’s graduation season in an economic downturn, so it’s time to reflect on the sorry state of college affordability, student loans and job prospects in the US. Being a twentysomething here in the US, I take discussions like these incredibly personally.

This afternoon I read this comment piece by Nicholas Lemann in The New Yorker about the increasingly elite nature of higher education in the US, spurred on by an ever-growing class divide and the fact that paying for an Ivy League education amounts to paying for social capital, not just actual learning (which isn’t enough). The attached dollar sign for social mobility is huge, and education remains the great guarantor of class mobility, social clout and lifelong earning potential.

The end quote of the piece sums up the current trend:

…higher education is becoming more like other areas of American life, with the fortunate few institutions distancing themselves ever further from the many. All those things which commencement speakers talk about—personal growth, critical-thinking skills, intellectual exploration, breadth of learning—will survive at the top institutions, but other colleges will come under increased pressure to adopt the model of trade schools. Student loans open access to students, and give colleges more freedom. Obama and Romney will have plenty to disagree about, and it’s good that the interest rate on student loans isn’t on the list. For the federal government to pump extra tuition money into the system, in the form of low-cost loans, in order to spread opportunity more widely, and to allow more schools to provide more than skills instruction, seems like a small price to pay for the kind of society it buys.

In conclusion, as I tweeted a few moments ago: the one-percentification of higher ed in the US really does make me want to kick things. Things owned by the one-percent, of course. Three cheers for straight-up class rage on a Monday afternoon.

The NATO summit protests in Chicago yesterday afternoon. These...

Mon, 21 May 2012 12:11:25 -0400

The NATO summit protests in Chicago yesterday afternoon. These photos were taken and submitted by Renee Kuhl.

Follow Renee on Tumblr!

You can view the rest of The Political Notebook’s project to gather photography, documentation and experiences from the OWS movements nationwide. I have also compiled an archive of all my posted submissions to this project on a single Pinterest board for your viewing convenience. Check out the Call for Submissions page and email your photos to me at torierosedeghett@gmail.com!

Guys, keep me in the loop, what's everybody reading this summer?

Mon, 21 May 2012 10:32:51 -0400

As if I need recommendations to add to the giant stack of unread books on my floor…

Also, if anyone knows of a really great book about the evolution of US immigration policies and politics, recommend that to me?

So there's been lots of protesting in Chicago against the NATO summit...

Mon, 21 May 2012 09:39:04 -0400

as well as a number of solidarity protests in other cities in the US and elsewhere. If any of you participated in or went to observe those protests, I want them! I have a submission or two from last night, but I’d like to include a nice selection of photographs from this event in my Occupy documentary archive. So get submitting! (And if you’re planning to go to one in the future, don’t forget to take photos and send them my way…)

Send them to torierosedeghett@gmail.com or I’ll take a link to them via Twitter (@trdeghett).

“Do you hate the Citizens United ruling and how it led to...

Mon, 21 May 2012 09:28:00 -0400

“Do you hate the Citizens United ruling and how it led to the flood of unlimited Super-PAC spending? You know it!” Check out Mother Jones’ interactive flowchart on how the Citizens United case could be taken down…

And after you do that, read Jeffrey Toobin’s longform piece in this issue of The New Yorker: “Money Unlimited: How Chief Justice John Roberts orchestrated the Citizens United decision.” There are some fascinating details about the oral argument proceedings, the dynamics of the Roberts court and the legal evolution of corporate personhood following the passage of the 14th amendment.

In a different way, though, Citizens United is a distinctive product of the Roberts Court. The decision followed a lengthy and bitter behind-the-scenes struggle among the Justices that produced both secret unpublished opinions and a rare reargument of a case. The case, too, reflects the aggressive conservative judicial activism of the Roberts Court. It was once liberals who were associated with using the courts to overturn the work of the democratically elected branches of government, but the current Court has matched contempt for Congress with a disdain for many of the Court’s own precedents. When the Court announced its final ruling on Citizens United, on January 21, 2010, the vote was five to four and the majority opinion was written by Anthony Kennedy. Above all, though, the result represented a triumph for Chief Justice Roberts. Even without writing the opinion, Roberts, more than anyone, shaped what the Court did. As American politics assumes its new form in the post-Citizens United era, the credit or the blame goes mostly to him.

[MoJo] [TNY]

WGN Live Video of Chicago protests.

Sun, 20 May 2012 19:56:01 -0400

WGN Live Video of Chicago protests. :

Stay safe, Chicago! (Also, SEND ME PHOTOS OF THESE PROTESTS! at torierosedeghett@gmail.com so I can post them on here!)

"The upshot is that teen motherhood is much more a consequence of intense poverty than its cause...."

Sun, 20 May 2012 13:46:18 -0400

“The upshot is that teen motherhood is much more a consequence of intense poverty than its cause. Preaching good behavior won’t do anything to reduce its incidence, and even handing out free birth control won’t contribute meaningfully to solving economic problems. Instead, family life seems to follow real economic opportunities. Where poor people can see that hard work and “playing by the rules” will reward them, they’re pretty likely to do just that. Where the system looks stacked against them, they’re more likely to abandon mainstream norms. Those who do so by becoming single teen moms end up fairing poorly in life, but those bad outcomes seem to be a result of bleak underlying circumstances rather than poor choices.”

- Matt Yglesias at Slate, explaining that getting pregnant doesn’t make teen girls more likely to be poor throughout life. Being poor makes teen girls more likely to get pregnant. Poverty isn’t something inflicted on teen mothers by some vindictive paternalistic cosmos, y’all…