News & Politics Blog 1328 items | updated May 17 2013

Who's got a sexy gray zip-up pullover, a turtleneck, and loves bobbing his head at a hip-hop show? Why, Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin! He even gets up on stage and promotes at least three of the pillars of hip hop: rap, graffiti and break-dancing, saying they promote a healthy lifestyle. "It is hard to imagine break dance being combined with alcohol or drugs."



As if it was just another chapter out of recent Russian history - the hip-hop event was called The Battle For Respect.

(Hat-tip Joshua Kucera at True/Slant)

(Update: Also posted to Current Music by TravG73)

Recently on the Current News Blog:
- Real Recovery: This week's about the freelancers
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Hey freelance workers, this week The Real Recovery is all about you. We want to hear from people who freelance successfully, people who have gone freelance after losing their job, and people who are barely scraping by with freelance work.

Did you know: If you're freelancing, even making far less money than you can survive on, you don't count as 'unemployed'? You fall under a different category called 'underemployment' - here's the applicable part of the definition from Wikipedia:

"Involuntary part-time" workers -- workers who could (and would like to) be working for a full work-week but can only find part-time work. By extension, the term is also used in regional planning to describe regions where economic activity rates are unusually low, due to a lack of job opportunities, training opportunities, or due to a lack of services such as childcare and public transportation.

The national unemployment rate is 10.2% as of October. That's according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS doesn't seem to keep a national underemployment number, which is a lot harder to nail down. But we recently saw that in California underemployment was estimated to be about a fifth of the total population.

This is another topic we want to tackle. As we're trying to put together a picture of the Real Recovery, we want to try to get a handle on underemployment estimates. We'll be working on that for the next month or so. If you want to get involved in that effort, send me a message on Current.

And this week - if you freelance or ever have - tell us about your experience by posting your story on The Real Recovery.

Recently on the Current News Blog:
- Did Obama smuggle a little democracy into China?
- Anti-Chinese violence in Angola
- Water on the moon!
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- Porn 2.0 - Christof Putzel's Vanguard documentary

I was watching Obama's town hall meeting with students in Shanghai last night. As he wrapped up his prepared remarks, stepped away from the podium, and began to explain the format of the town hall portion I realized that this might be absolutely foreign to many of these students. Here is a country's President, a very famous and powerful man, asking them to raise their hands and ask him a question. Whatever they asked him, he'd answer. We obviously take this sort of thing for granted - heck our most recent town halls seem to have devolved into purely shouting at our elected officials. But I couldn't shake the feeling that Obama, who was not joined on stage by any major Chinese official, had smuggled a little democracy into the PRC.


This video of his introducing the concept is from CNN and their anchor, predictably, talks all over him, but you can hear the second half. If anyone can find a clean video - I'll replace this one with it.

He also, and this was the headlining remark, asserted the American position that it's okay for everyone to use Twitter.

President Barack Obama pointedly nudged China on Monday to stop censoring Internet access, offering an animated defense of the tool that helped him win the White House and suggesting Beijing need not fear a little criticism....

"I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable," Obama told students during his first-ever trip to China. "They can begin to think for themselves."

If the President's goal was to sneak a little democracy into the People's Republic, it seems to have not reached too many citizens. The event was not broadcast nationally - only on local Shanghai stations - and the live feed from the White House web site was reportedly choppy and hard to watch in China.

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Angola, with tens of thousands ex-patriate Chinese workers, is seeing a series of "mafia-style" violent attacks targeting the Chinese. From the BBC:

Last month robbers reportedly poured boiling water on three Chinese workers in Luanda.

In September businessman Xu Tonggou was murdered trying to resist a robbery.

On the same day six armed men robbed the offices of a construction company, beating workers with batons and threatening them with AK-47s.

Mariana van Zeller went to Angola to look at growing Chinese investment in the country in Chinatown, Africa.


Chinatown, Africa (Video)

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NASA announced today that the LCROSS mission (perhaps better known as 'when NASA bombed the moon') did in fact find water - in the form of ice - on the moon.

The satellite, known as Lcross (pronounced L-cross), slammed into a crater near the Moon’s south pole a month ago. The impact carved out a hole 60- to 100-feet wide and kicked up at least 24 gallons of water.

“We got more than just whiff,” said Peter H. Schultz, a professor of geological sciences at Brown University and a co-investigator of the mission. “We practically tasted it with the impact.”

My compatriot Rich in the UK points out a similar announcement made in September after an Indian moon mission. The different between the two missions seems to be that while the Indian mission Chandrayaan-1 found evidence of water through electromagnetic analysis, the LCROSS mission actually made physical contact with the stuff, allowing NASA scientists to state that water exists unequivocally and in large amounts.

Does this mean we're going to the moon? Maybe! Water already up there could provide an invaluable resource for exploratory missions. The Obama administration has called for a review of spending on manned space programs with possible cuts looming. However, the 2010 budget did include "$630 million in additional near-term funding for development of follow-on rockets and spacecraft needed for the agency's post-shuttle moon program". Big cuts could be in the works after that, but finding water on the moon might pump a little more life and funding back into the program.

Should we go to the moon? Let us know what you think on Current News.

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- Is college worth the high cost? - The Real Recovery

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed claims to be the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. Now, after years of detention in Guantanamo, he'll be brought to New York for trial, according to unnamed Administration officials Attorney General Eric Holder.

He'll be joined by four other 9/11 suspects in civilian federal court. The case will be a test for the Obama plan to prosecute terrorists as criminals versus try them in military court. The defense for Mr. Mohammed, known through the 9/11 Commission Report as KSM, already plans to introduce arguments about their client being illegally tortured.

Hey New Yorkers, what do you think - is this justice being served at long last? Or do you not even want him in the US much less in the city? Tell us what you think on Current News.

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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.

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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)

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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

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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.

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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?

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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?

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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.

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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.