News & Politics Blog 750 items | updated May 26 2012

Last night Vanguard premiered Porn 2.0, correspondent Christof Putzel's revealing look into what's happening in an industry that is often the technological leader in media.

If you missed it - fear not - it's online!


Porn 2.0 (Video)

Also, check out the exclusive web extras over here.

Recently on the Current News Blog:
- Does Ciudad Juarez need UN peacekeepers?
- Who are the basij? A look at Iran's hard-line militia
- Is college worth the high cost? - The Real Recovery
- Pandemic in Ukraine - Is it swine flu?
- Who's unemployed in America? - The Real Recovery

Mexico has brought its army to bear on the battle against warring drug gangs, but local business leaders say it's not enough. They want international peacekeeping troops to come in and help out the 5000+ Mexican soldiers.

Groups representing maquiladora assembly plants, retailers and other businesses said they will submit a request to the Mexican government and the Inter American Human Rights Commission to ask the U.N. to send help.

"This is a proposal ... for international forces to come here to help out the domestic (security) forces," said Daniel Murguia, president of the Ciudad Juarez chapter of the National Chamber of Commerce, Services and Tourism. "There is a lot of extortions and robberies of businesses. Many businesses are closing."

We're used to seeing blue helmets drop in on failed or close-to-failing states and so this call for peacekeepers to come to Mexico (and to a city within walking distance from the US) could be a worrying signal. The UN's other deployment in the Western Hemisphere is Haiti. Is Juarez headed that direction?

This is a short piece about UN peacekeepers at work in Haiti - it gives you a good sense of the level of challenge in a nation that they typically respond to.


A Blue Helmet in Haiti (Video)

Recently on the Current News Blog:
- Who are the basij? A look at Iran's hard-line militia
- Is college worth the high cost? - The Real Recovery
- Pandemic in Ukraine - Is it swine flu?
- Who's unemployed in America? - The Real Recovery
- DC sniper John Allen Muhammad to be executed tonight

The LA Times has a fantastic profile of an Iranian couple who were both members of the Basiji - the hard-line militia group that provides much of the muscle behind the governments crackdowns on the opposition. It's an incredibly personal story of transformation.

Once during a law class she took to help with her part-time job at a law office, the subject was women's rights. Under Iranian law, the professor said, a woman was worth half a man when it came to court testimony or inheritance.

"That's not fair," she burst out, reminded of the bitter child-custody battle that her sister had endured, and lost, against an abusive husband.

"You're a feminist," the professor accused her.

That night, she pulled out a dictionary and looked up "feminist."

She read the definition, and decided that she was.

The basij have long fascinated watchers of Iran, but given their enmity to the West, rarely speak with Western journalists. This profile seems to have been possible because the writer was longtime friends of the couple. Kouross Esmaeli, a journalist working with Collective Journalism for Current was able to get unprecedented access to the group a few years ago and some of its members gave him a very frank depiction of their worldview.


Basijis: Iran’s Culture Cops (VIDEO) - The militia backing up Ahmadinejad

Recently on the Current News Blog:
- Is college worth the high cost? - The Real Recovery
- Pandemic in Ukraine - Is it swine flu?
- Who's unemployed in America? - The Real Recovery
- DC sniper John Allen Muhammad to be executed tonight
- How safe are Pakistani nukes?

This week on The Real Recovery we're looking at how the recession is affecting college grads. It's tough to graduate into such a tight job market. Especially if you've got loans. For many, going to college automatically comes with a big chunk of money that must be paid off. As finding a job gets harder - that amount of money can hang like an albatross from your neck.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="580" caption="Posted on The Broke Grad Student"][/caption]

This breakdown, posted on The Broke Grad Student, shows average student loan debt by state - and no matter where you live, that average is somewhere between $13K and $26K. That's a lot of money!

But despite the high costs the question for many American high schoolers is not whether to go but where to go. Are too many Americans going to college?

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Marty Nemko: Increasing college-going rates may actually hurt our economy. We now send 70 percent of high-school graduates to college, up from 40 percent in 1970. At the same time, employers are accelerating their offshoring, part-timing, and temping of as many white-collar jobs as possible. That results in ever more unemployed and underemployed B.A.'s. Meanwhile, there's a shortage of tradespeople to take the Obama infrastructure-rebuilding jobs. And you and I have a hard time getting a reliable plumber even if we're willing to pay $80 an hour—more than many professors make.

It's estimated that on average college grads tend to make about 80% more per year in salary than those without a degree. That's a pretty significant and motivating number, especially when you take into consideration the higher unemployment numbers for those without a college degree that we looked at yesterday. But if you've got loans - some of that has to go to paying them off. And for grad students it's even worse.

Faced with a difficult job market and high student debts, many folks with a B.A. duck back into graduate school to forestall repayments they can't afford. But as you can imagine - that just leads to more debt. Forbes has a controversially titled article that tackles the high debts a law degree can come with: The Great College Hoax.

Accepted into the California Western School of Law, a private San Diego institution, [John] Kellum couldn't swing the $36,000 in annual tuition with financial aid and part-time work. So he did what friends and professors said was the smart move and took out $60,000 in student loans.

Kellum's law school sweetheart, Jennifer Coultas, did much the same. By the time they graduated in 1995, the couple was $194,000 in debt. They eventually married and each landed a six-figure job. Yet even with Kellum moonlighting, they had to scrounge to come up with $145,000 in loan payments. With interest accruing at up to 12% a year, that whittled away only $21,000 in principal. Their remaining bill: $173,000 and counting.

Should you go to grad school? Most experts agree it only makes sense if you have a specific goal in mind. Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist lists several points against enlisting in grad school to hide out from a recession:

1. Grad school pointlessly delays adulthood....3. Business school is not going to help 90% of the people who go....5. The medical school model assumes that health care spending is not a mess.

So what's your experience? Did you go to college? Grad school? Did you have an albatross of loan debt? Tell us your story on The Real Recovery.

Recently on the Current News Blog:
- Pandemic in Ukraine - Is it swine flu?
- Who's unemployed in America? - The Real Recovery
- DC sniper John Allen Muhammad to be executed tonight
- How safe are Pakistani nukes?
- Real Recovery college stories

An epidemic is in full swing in the Ukraine. Swine flu is a part of it - but so far only account for somewhere around 70 reported cases. Otherwise over a million people have been stricken with flu or respiratory symptoms. The death toll is 174 and at nearly 53,000 Ukrainians have been hospitalized.

Schools and universities closed, whole regions are quarantined and masks and medication are sold out in most cities and towns. Ukraine is also in the midst of a Presidential election which has politicized the outbreak.

Current user AlexBush clipped this video from Russia Today.



(Frankly - I'm just as confused about what's actually happening after watching that video.)

If you're in Ukraine - let us know. Are people panicking?

Recently on the Current News Blog:
- Who's unemployed in America? - The Real Recovery
- DC sniper John Allen Muhammad to be executed tonight
- How safe are Pakistani nukes?
- Real Recovery college stories
- Fall of the Berlin Wall

Who is faring the worst in this recession? Everyone is doing poorly - but some groups have been more affected than others. The NY Times Economix blog broke down the numbers by huge swaths of demographics last week.

The graph that caught my eye was the very first one - apropos of our Real Recovery topic this week - how are recent college grads affected?



(That said, when you break it down by education, college grads have done comparatively well - those with less education have been more adversely affected.)

The worst affected group is young, African-American men who are less educated. This neat interactive graphic compares all the different demographic slices. Where do you fall on the graph? Has that been your experience?

What is The Real Recovery?

Recently on the Current News Blog:
- DC sniper John Allen Muhammad to be executed tonight
- How safe are Pakistani nukes?
- Real Recovery college stories
- Fall of the Berlin Wall
- Chavez: Prepare for war

Unless Virginia Governor Tim Kaine steps in, the state will execute John Allen Muhammad the "Beltway sniper" tonight at 9pm. Yesterday the Supreme Court declined to hear Muhammad's appeal (clipped by LadybugLady). UPDATE: Gov. Kaine has denied Muhammad's clemency appeal.

Muhammad, along with his teenage accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo, was responsible for a 2002 killing spree in the DC area that left 10 people dead. The shootings targeted everyday people in everyday locations like gas stations. They were all the more frightening because they were unpredictable and without motive. It had just been a year since the September 11th attacks and for the period while the shootings were taking place, it was a a new wave of terror for Washington-area residents.

Muhammad has maintained his innocence. His accomplice, Malvo, is serving life in prison without parole. (Ironically, a case that the Supreme Court did hear yesterday was on whether life without parole was cruel and unusual punishment for teenagers.)

We've been looking at the death penalty a lot in the last few weeks, mostly because of the case of Cameron Todd Willingham in Texas - where the state may have executed an innocent man. With a case like that, opposition to the death penalty seems practical: let's prevent mistakes from occurring. The Muhammad case is a bit different. It falls along the line of retribution - why Obama says he's supports the death penalty, despite doubts about its efficacy: "the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage."

What do you think? Is the community justified in this instance? In any instance?

Recently on the Current News Blog:
- How safe are Pakistani nukes?
- Real Recovery college stories
- Fall of the Berlin Wall
- Chavez: Prepare for war
- Al Qaeda has a magazine!

There are few things I love more than finding a big long Seymour Hersh piece in the New Yorker - and today brings a doozy: Defending the Arsenal.

The thrust of the piece is that the greatest threat to the security of Pakistan's nukes could come not from the Taliban, but from within the military itself. Hersh also goes into extensive detail about the workings of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal and the US' secret efforts to help better secure it. Lots of great tidbits in there like:

Safeguards have been built into the system. Pakistani nuclear doctrine calls for the warheads (containing an enriched radioactive core) and their triggers (sophisticated devices containing highly explosive lenses, detonators, and krytrons) to be stored separately from each other and from their delivery devices (missiles or aircraft). The goal is to insure that no one can launch a warhead—in the heat of a showdown with India, for example—without pausing to put it together. Final authority to order a nuclear strike requires consensus within Pakistan’s ten-member National Command Authority, with the chairman—by statute, President Zardari—casting the deciding vote.

At least one blogger in the Pakistani blogosphere has been less than kind to Mr. Hersh for calling the effectiveness of their military into question. From the blog Bazm-e-Iqbal:

American scaremongerers like Seymour Hersh need to come out of the wonderland they are living in. Before talking about mutiny in the Pakistan army and trying to help secure our nukes you better pay attention to securing Fort Hood.

Recently on the Current News Blog:
- Real Recovery college stories
- Fall of the Berlin Wall
- Chavez: Prepare for war
- Al Qaeda has a magazine!
- Recession and the college graduate - The Real Recovery

This week, the Real Recovery is focusing on college graduates - recent, upcoming and all-time. I wanted to highlight a few stories shared in the comment thread on the initial college stories post. If you have one - go to the Real Recovery group, click Post a Story, and start typing!

From user trangster:

I graduated this past May and applied for part time and full time jobs. After months of being rejected by employers for not having work experience because I was earning a college education at the time, I started working as a part time host at a restaurant. I recently picked up another part time job so now I'm working two part time jobs to meet bills. Hopefully I get accepted into grad school next year.

From user sugarlilly:

i am a recent college grad working in a job i love but that requires absolutely no education. sorry sallie mae, that 50 grand will have to wait.

From user Karolein:

The first term I learned on-the-job after college was "reduction in force". It was a rude awakening. I finished graduate school in a recession and it took 18 months to find a full-time, regular job. After 15 years in a nice office, I'm looking again, but instead of living at home I have a mortgage to pay. Life is cyclical.

Recently on the Current News Blog:
- Fall of the Berlin Wall
- Chavez: Prepare for war
- Al Qaeda has a magazine!
- Recession and the college graduate - The Real Recovery
- Meet Mahmoud Vahidnia: Mathlete, Iranian opposition hero

I actually don't remember where I was when I found out that the Berlin Wall fell twenty years ago. Strange because I have such clear memories of other 1980s landmarks like the Challenger explosion. What I do remember most clearly about the reunification of East and West Germany was from German class a few years later. Our textbooks were a few years old, still in good condition, but completely outpaced by the movement of history. Everyday there would be a new page we would read with an outdated cultural reference to a divided Germany. It was the first I'd ever really learned about East Germany - and it sounded terrible.

Share your memory of the fall of the Berlin Wall with us.

A few sites with some great anniversary coverage:
German magazine Der Spiegel has a collection of articles worth reading.

On Tumblr, Best of Life is posting some gripping images out of the Life magazine archives of the Wall throughout its infamous life.



And Magnum has a picture essay of years in East Germany.

Recently on the Current News Blog:
- Chavez: Prepare for war
- Al Qaeda has a magazine!
- Recession and the college graduate - The Real Recovery
- Meet Mahmoud Vahidnia: Mathlete, Iranian opposition hero
- Unemployment spikes to 10.2 percent - The Real Recovery

Amid all the news out there this Monday morning (health care bills, awakened Ft. Hood shooters, menacing Gulf hurricanes, over-bonused bankers) this little gem caught my eye.

From the AP: Chavez to troops: Prepare for war with Colombia

President Hugo Chavez ordered Venezuela's military on Sunday to prepare for a possible armed conflict with Colombia, saying the country's soldiers should be ready if the United States attempts to provoke a war between the South American neighbors.

"The best way to avoid war is preparing for it," Chavez told military officers standing at attention during his weekly television and radio program.

Chavez is worried about the influence the US exerts over Colombia, their military cooperation, and argues that the Obama Administration could try to stir up a conflict between the two South American nations (because they're not busy enough?). From the Venezuelan perspective a new military pact between the US and Colombia threatens the region's stability.

According to Francisco Javier Arias, deputy Foreign Minister of Venezuela, Colombia signed a pact with the U.S. allowing the Americans to freely use Colombian military bases and airports to secure the "continuity of the empire."

"President Uribe is putting the region at risk to secure his re-election, dragging an elephant like the United States into a china shop, with the idea of solve problems that this northern country is not interested in," the official told Colombian Caracol Radio.

Chavez ordered 15,000 additional Venezuelan troops to the border. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe plans to appeal to the UN Security Council.

(h/t FP Passport)

Recently on the Current News Blog:
- Al Qaeda has a magazine!
- Recession and the college graduate - The Real Recovery
- Meet Mahmoud Vahidnia: Mathlete, Iranian opposition hero
- Unemployment spikes to 10.2 percent - The Real Recovery
- Iraq's bomb detectors are useless?

Don't say the magazine industry is dead yet - there's still some space left for expansion - like into the world of international terrorism.



Neal Ungerleider at True/Slant found this gem of jihadi literature online. It's a dense 73 pages and is titled "The Echo of Battle". (Maybe the magazine industry just needs to work on its titling?) Interestingly, it seems to feature a lot of discussions of movement philosophy as well as some very charming stock imagery:





Get your own copy over here.

Recently on the Current News Blog:
- Recession and the college graduate - The Real Recovery
- Meet Mahmoud Vahidnia: Mathlete, Iranian opposition hero
- Unemployment spikes to 10.2 percent - The Real Recovery
- Iraq's bomb detectors are useless?
- 20 more weeks of unemployment

It's been a tumultuous for the economy in the half-week since we launched The Real Recovery: unemployment benefits were extended and then October's unemployment numbers hit over 10 percent. It seems like just the right time to get to the real stories behind the economic stats.

Each week on The Real Recovery we're going to ask a big question - and then spend the week figuring out the answer with your help. For next week - we're looking at those entering the job market for the very first time.

If a tenth of America is unemployed - how hard is it going to be for recent college graduates to get jobs? For college seniors who expect to graduate in 2010? From the National Bureau of Economic Research: "The Career Effects Of Graduating In A Recession":

Graduating in a recession leads to large initial earnings losses. These losses, which amount to about 9 percent of annual earnings in the initial stage, eventually recede, but slowly -- halving within five years but not disappearing until about ten years after graduation.

Starting Monday - we're going to focus on college graduates. Here's how you can get involved:

Are you a college senior?: Post a story on The Real Recovery about your job search. Do you have something lined up? Are you just trying not to think about it?

Did you graduate this year?: How's it been out there in the job market? Have you been able to find work?

Did you graduate years ago?: How was your experience in the economic climate you had? How does it compare to today's?

You can post your story to Current by clicking the "Post a Story" button on The Real Recovery group page and then just start typing!

And also, if you want to get involved as an investigator - send me a message on Current.

From mild-mannered mathlete to national opposition hero - it's been a crazy couple of weeks for Iranian math student Mahmoud Vahidnia.



At a meeting between students and the Ayatollah Khamenei, Vahidnia raised his had to ask a question and then spent twenty minutes criticizing the country's Supreme Leader to his face.

"I don't know why in this country it's not allowed to make any kind of criticism of you," said the student, wearing a long-sleeved blue polo shirt and appearing calm.

"In the past three to five years that I have been reading newspapers, I have seen no criticism of you, not even by the Assembly of Experts, whose duty is to criticize and supervise the performance of the leader," he said, referring to the clerical body that chooses the country's supreme leader.

Khamenei countered, "We welcome criticism. We never said not to criticize us. ... There's plenty of criticism that I receive," according to accounts in state media and on opposition Web sites.

Contrary to the stories of the thousands of protesters and critics of the country's election results - Mahmoud Vahidnia has faced no repercussions. In fact the incident was originally reported by the Supreme Leader's office - touting the country's tolerance for healthy debate. Initially many questioned whether the incident was staged for such a purpose - though opposition leaders are now saying the incident was the real deal.

Here's some video (albeit in Persian) of the meeting with a little bit of Vahidnia at the podium.

(h/t themajlis.org)

Posted to Current News by elsonwvu.

Recently on the Current News Blog:
- Unemployment spikes to 10.2 percent - The Real Recovery
- Iraq's bomb detectors are useless?
- 20 more weeks of unemployment
- Tune in tonight for Vanguard's Sri Lanka: Notes from a War on Terror
- 2009 election round-up: NYC, NY-23, NJ and VA, Maine

This week we launched The Real Recovery: we're working with you on a collaborative investigation into the end of the recession. Sure the Dow is up but are things getting better nationwide?

According to the news today, apparently not. National unemployment has risen to 10.2 percent, the highest it's been since 1983. (posted to Current by ebindelglass)

That's one in ten Americans who are out of work. A lot of people! (Good timing on that unemployment extension, Congress.) This is why we think it's so important to get behind the numbers to the experiences people are having. Come help us out - tell your story or be one of our investigators on The Real Recovery.

More info: The Real Recovery – A collaborative investigation
Join the group: The Real Recovery

Recently on the Current News Blog:
- Iraq's bomb detectors are useless?
- 20 more weeks of unemployment
- Tune in tonight for Vanguard's Sri Lanka: Notes from a War on Terror
- 2009 election round-up: NYC, NY-23, NJ and VA, Maine
- Man Makes it Snow in China (Video)

Getting caught up on this story from yesterday in the NY Times: Apparently security forces in Iraq are using bomb detecting "wands" that the Pentagon thinks are useless. All those checkpoints that are supposed to keep Iraq's cities safe from car bombs might not be having much of an effect at all.

The Iraqis, however, believe passionately in them. “Whether it’s magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs,” said Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, head of the Ministry of the Interior’s General Directorate for Combating Explosives.

Dale Murray, head of the National Explosive Engineering Sciences Security Center at Sandia Labs, which does testing for the Department of Defense, said the center had “tested several devices in this category, and none have ever performed better than random chance.”

Iraq is in the middle of a delicate transition period. Things have begun to seem more stable, less violent. US troops have pulled back to their bases, out of the cities. And blast walls in the capital have even come down. But with recent bombings in Baghdad - bomb detection is a really critical part of maintaining security. The New York Times described the wands as working on the "same principle as a Ouija board" - by the power of user suggestion.

On Tuesday, a guard and a driver for The New York Times, both licensed to carry firearms, drove through nine police checkpoints that were using the device. None of the checkpoint guards detected the two AK-47 rifles and ammunition inside the vehicle.

During an interview on Tuesday, General Jabiri challenged a Times reporter to test the ADE 651, placing a grenade and a machine pistol in plain view in his office. Despite two attempts, the wand did not detect the weapons when used by the reporter but did so each time it was used by a policeman.

“You need more training,” the general said.

Recently on the Current News Blog:
- 20 more weeks of unemployment
- Tune in tonight for Vanguard's Sri Lanka: Notes from a War on Terror
- 2009 election round-up: NYC, NY-23, NJ and VA, Maine
- The Real Recovery – A collaborative investigation
- Man Makes it Snow in China (Video)

The Senate passed a bill yesterday to extend unemployment benefits for the jobless to 14 weeks, and up to 20 weeks for those who live in states with over 8.5 percent unemployment.

From the Washington Post:

More than 1 million people would have had their benefits ended without the extension, according to the National Employment Law Project, a nonpartisan group that tracks the issue. More than 15 million Americans are now unemployed, more than a third of whom have been out of work for more than six months.

Also yesterday we launched The Real Recovery (here's the intro blog post) - our group investigation into how the recession's effects are still lingering despite its end. Are you unemployed - directly affected by this news? Let us know. Go join The Real Recovery group and post your personal story.

Recently on the Current News Blog:
- Tune in tonight for Vanguard's Sri Lanka: Notes from a War on Terror
- 2009 election round-up: NYC, NY-23, NJ and VA, Maine
- The Real Recovery – A collaborative investigation
- Man Makes it Snow in China (Video)
- The EU finally gets Lisbon; Thanks Vaclav Klaus

Tonight is the premiere of a new Vanguard episode: Sri Lanka: Notes from a War on Terror. It is a pretty fantastic piece of journalism and a great exploration of one way to conduct a war on terror: with an iron hand.


This Week on Vanguard: Sri Lanka: Notes from a War on Terror (Video)

The episode airs tonight on Current at 10pm ET/10pm PT. Don't miss it.

Also - check out Mariana's post today about the story: My Second Tour of Sri Lanka

Recently on the Current News Blog:
- 2009 election round-up: NYC, NY-23, NJ and VA, Maine
- The Real Recovery – A collaborative investigation
- Man Makes it Snow in China (Video)
- The EU finally gets Lisbon; Thanks Vaclav Klaus
- Election Perspective: New York and New Jersey by ScorpioGee

We’re launching a big project today on Current News. And we’re going to need your help.

Here’s the idea:
Everybody says we’re headed for an economic recovery, right? The economy grew in the third quarter of this year, the Dow is hovering around 10,000, even Ford managed to make a profit. But the other thing that everybody says is that it’ll be a “jobless” recovery. The economy might grow, but unemployment will stay the same. To say nothing of underemployment – people who have taken lesser positions, started freelancing or stopped looking for new work. While the financial folks celebrate the return of the bull market – what about the rest of us?



We want to paint a picture of what’s really going on out there. As the recession comes to an end – what does the recovery really look like? What is the real recovery?

Over the next few months – until the end of the first quarter of next year – we’re going to conduct a special new experimental project to look at the state of our nation. This is where you come in.

My office is in San Francisco. I can give local perspectives from here. But in order to tell this story from every corner of the country – we need your help. What do things look like where you live? Do you have a personal story about how you’ve been affected by the recession?


How you can get involved:
- The big thing is that you can write your own posts in the group “The Real Recovery”. What are we looking for? Local perspectives and personal perspectives. Just a few paragraphs: How are you or your community affected? Every week we’ll have different questions we’re asking – and we want you to post your answers.
- Now, do you want to get really involved? You can become a part of our Current Investigation Network. That means we’ll put you on an email list where sometimes we’ll reach out digging for info or to ask you to help out with collaborative assignments. If you want to be a part of the project by doing a little real journalism – this is the way to do it.
- And as always, you can clip stories and you can weigh in on the comments of posts. We’ll be highlighting stories people post over on the Blog – and that could be yours.

This is a big new step for Current News, and I’m personally very excited about it. I worked on Collective Journalism for two years, our citizen journalism program, and I think this is an even bigger opportunity to get even more people involved in the journalism we make.

So, what’s the next step?
- Join the group: “The Real Recovery”
- Tell us your story – just a few paragraphs. Either post in the comments here – or post your own story to the group. This Friday we’ll feature some of your contributions.
- If you want to be a part of the investigation team – send me a direct message on Current.com.

Stay tuned!