[aggregation-styles] The Guardian In Washington, at times of stress, international crises play out in black and white. As in a flickering newsreel from a former age, complex events are reduced to symbolic emblems of right and wrong. Grainy video images of “evil-doers”, George W Bush’s favoured term, purport to show...
All 50 U.S. States, Ranked By How Fun They Are. (Sorry, West Virginia)
[aggregation-styles] Inc. Let's start the week off with a very serious question: Did you have fun over the weekend? If a new ranking of the 50 states has any legitimacy, we can probably predict your answer based on where you were. We've looked at this kind of thing before, of...
Your Dog Isn't a ‘Furry Little Human.’ A Bioethicist Explains.
Traffic is slow as I work my way down 28th Street in Boulder, Colo. In the car edging ahead of me, I can see the outline of a bushy-haired human in the driver’s seat and the two pricked ears of a dog in the passenger seat. Waiting for a red...
Trump’s Israel-Palestine ‘Deal’ Has Always Been a Fraud
[aggregation-styles] Financial Times The “deal of the century” through which US President Donald Trump keeps boasting he will settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been postponed so many times that Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, has dismissed it as the deal of the next century. Others have forecast...
America’s Closest Allies Are Working Hard to Find Ways to Undermine the U.S. Dollar
[aggregation-styles] The Washington Post This week we watched an unusual spectacle. The foreign minister of Germany, one of the United States’ closest allies, went to Tehran and announced that a European payment system, designed as an alternative to the dollar-based one, would soon be ready. This visit was made in...
Better Schools Won’t Fix America
[aggregation-styles] The Atlantic Long ago, I was captivated by a seductively intuitive idea, one many of my wealthy friends still subscribe to: that both poverty and rising inequality are largely consequences of America’s failing education system. Fix that, I believed, and we could cure much of what ails America. This...
Jimmy Carter: America Must Recognize Palestine
[aggregation-styles] The New York Times ATLANTA — We do not yet know the policy of the next administration toward Israel and Palestine, but we do know the policy of this administration. It has been President Obama’s aim to support a negotiated end to the conflict based on two states, living...
Why Does the U.S. Need Trolls to Make Its Iran Case?
[aggregation-styles] The Washington Post This weekend, a new wrinkle was added to the ongoing saga about the information war over Iran policy: the stunning revelation that an online persona that was cited by the Trump administration to justify leaving the Iran nuclear deal is likely not a real person, after...
This Teenager Knows a Secret to Slowing Guatemalan Migration
[aggregation-styles] The New York Times HUEHUETENANGO, Guatemala — When Lesly Cano Gómez was 15, she wrote out her plan to migrate to America. “My dream is to go to the United States,” she wrote, followed by three discussion sections: “How Am I Going to Pay for It,” “Who’s Going to...
Valley’s ‘Climate Kids’ to Push Congress on Saving Earth
The world is still waiting to see if a climate case brought by 21 young plaintiffs in 2015 (Juliana vs United States ) will be allowed to continue to trial. Meanwhile, I will have the honor of traveling to Washington, D.C. this week, with three of the Central Valley’s student climate advocates. As...
