Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011
DAVID AVITAL and DAVID HALPERIN, - Politico
Stephan: I agree with this assessment with one caveat. I still believe the better model is Turkey, because it has demonstrated how a democratic Muslim state can sustain stability for decades. But, either way, there are now two paths for other Muslim states to use as models.
David Avital is an executive committee member of Israel Policy Forum. David Halperin is a policy analyst at Israel Policy Forum and the Center for American Progress.
The Middle East uprisings – demanding freedom, democracy and prosperity from corrupt, autocratic rulers – give the United States a unique historical opportunity to redefine its policies in the region and regain creditability.
To do so, it should look to Morocco.
While seeking to curb extremists from taking advantage of the unrest, Washington must change its habit of blindly supporting friendly autocrats, who favor stability over freedom. The U.S. must also work with its regional allies on reforms to create a blueprint for the model modern Muslim state.
This model has yet to emerge. Many looked to Turkey. But the struggle between its military and political echelons, and its inability to harness the spirit of this Arab awakening, rule it out. Iraq’s nascent democracy was also considered, but its political stability remains questionable.
Morocco’s progress in recent years, however, has been significant. Since becoming king in 1999, Mohammed VI broke away from his father’s brutal policies during the ‘Years of Lead
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Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011
JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN, - Slate
Stephan: Here is an excellent summary of a little known, but important, part of North American history. Much of what most Americans believe about the First Americans -- theirs was a peaceful Utopian world -- is simplistic fantasy and nonsense. Just because these First Americans did not leave writing their cultures should not be seen as simple, and they should not be seen as a different order of people from other humans. As in so many other areas what is needed is the clarity of facts, which is why I publish reports such as this one.
Over the past few decades, in Tennessee, archaeologists have unearthed an elaborate caveÂart tradition thousands of years old. The pictures are found in dark zone sites-places where the Native American people who made the artwork did so at personal risk, crawling meters or, in some cases, miles underground with cane torches-as opposed to sites in the ‘twilight zone,’ speleologists’ jargon for the stretch, just beyond the entry chamber, which is exposed to diffuse sunlight. A pair of local hobby cavers, friends who worked for the U.S. Forest Service, found the first of these sites in 1979. They’d been exploring an old root cellar and wriggled up into a higher passage. The walls were covered in a thin layer of clay sediment left there during long ago floods and maintained by the cave’s unchanging temperature and humidity. The stuff was still soft. It looked at first as though someone had fingerÂpainted all over, maybe a child-the men debated even saying anything. But the older of them was a student of local history. He knew some of those images from looking at drawings of pots and shell ornaments that emerged from the fields around there: bird men, a dancing warrior figure, a […]
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Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011
Stephan: There are a number of things about which I disagree with Ralph Nader, but this assessment is fact based, and accurate. I chose it from more scientific papers because it had all the relevant data in one report.
The unfolding multiple nuclear reactor catastrophe in Japan is prompting overdue attention to the 104 nuclear plants in the United States-many of them aging, many of them near earthquake faults, some on the west coast exposed to potential tsunamis.
Nuclear power plants boil water to produce steam to turn turbines that generate electricity. Nuclear power’s overly complex fuel cycle begins with uranium mines and ends with deadly radioactive wastes for which there still are no permanent storage facilities to contain them for tens of thousands of years.
Atomic power plants generate 20 percent of the nation’s electricity. Over forty years ago, the industry’s promoter and regulator, the Atomic Energy Commission estimated that a full nuclear meltdown could contaminate an area ‘the size of Pennsylvania
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Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011
Stephan: Here is some factual data that shows the endless fear mongering of the gun and 'values' lobbies for what they really are -- purveyors of disinformation.
Los Angeles’ violent-crime rates are four times lower now than they were 1992. The interesting thing is, nobody can really explain why.
As of December 25, last year, only 293 homicides were reported in LA, along with 781 rapes, 10,734 robberies, and 9,129 aggravated assaults. In 1992, that blood-soaked year of the Rodney King Riots, Los Angeles saw 1,092 murders, 1,861 rapes, 39,222 robberies, and 47,736 aggravated assaults.
These figures echo a nationwide trend. ‘Crime Rate at 20-Year Low Level,’ reads a February 24 headline in the Frederick, Maryland News Post. ‘Major Crime at 39-Year Low in Elgin,’ the Chicago Tribune crowed on February 22. ‘Fresno’s Murder Rate Is Drastically Down in 2011,’ announced that California’s town’s ABC-TV affiliate on February 23. Such headlines are typical these days. Crime’s down. What’s up?
Theories abound. Various agencies, such as the office of LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, credit themselves with the shift. But in the din of the applause, some of these theories and claims cancel each other out.
Noting that LA in 1992 ‘was like a war zone,’ LAPD Sgt. Joe Kuns remembers how, that year, no one in their right mind strolled the downtown intersection of First and Main streets for fun […]
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Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011
Stephan:
Tokyo — Short-term exposure to food contaminated by radiation from Japan’s damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant poses no immediate health risk, a spokesman for the World Health Organization said Monday.
The United Nations organization initially said the food safety situation was ‘more serious’ than originally thought. But spokesman Peter Cordingley said Monday that the assessment was based not on the levels of contamination but on the fact that radioactivity was found in food beyond the 12.4-mile (30-kilometer) evacuation zone.
‘It’s new and something we’re watching,’ Cordingley said.
On Monday, authorities in the village of Iitake urged residents to avoid drinking tap water that tests showed contained more than three times the maximum standard of radioactive iodine. The day before, a government ban on the sale of raw milk from Fukushima Prefecture and spinach from neighboring Ibaraki Prefecture became public.
Japanese officials reported levels of radioactive iodine in milk from four locations in Fukushima that ranged from about 20% over the acceptable limit to more than 17 times that limit. Testing at one location also found levels of cesium about 5% over the acceptable limit, the health ministry reported Sunday.
In Ibaraki, a major center of vegetable production, tests at 10 locations found iodine levels in […]
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