This is the first of what hopefully will become a regular feature of The Left Bank Cafe. Every Sunday, I'll post
links to articles appearing in online versions of newspapers or
journals outside the mainstream media. The intent is to provide
some insight and background that you may not be getting with your
daily dose of US flavor-of-the-week news.
Weather and Climate Change
Drought in the
Plains States, superstormss in the Northeast, blizzards in the UK -
extreme weather events are becoming the norm throughout the Northern
Hemisphere. Meteorologists ae finding it more difficult to predict
the weather. In this April 6 article from The Guardian, a
researcher traces the reason for the turbulent patterns to the rapid warming of the Arctic
and its effect on the jetstream.
WTF?
Some
of the more egregious policies from the Bush era are being
institutionalized. One of the first actions of Obama after taking
office was to sign orders to begin the process of closing the prison
at Guantanamo. Four years later, there is little to no hope that
this will actually occur. In this April 2 article from RollingStone, the author
reviews how "Guantanamo Bay and the RDI program are both back in
the news now, each for their own unsavory reasons, and their
reemergence should be a reminder of how fully the Obama
administration has embraced the logic underpinning the Bush regime's
response to 9/11. " Change you can believe in?
Gun Violence and Gun Laws
Gun deaths are projected to exceed
deaths due to automobile accidents by 2015. Still, the assault
weapons ban has gone down in flames and President Obama is struggling
to get universal background checks, supported by 80-90% of the
American public, through Congress. The Guardian points out that "the
reality is that the majority of gun legislation in the US is enacted
at the state level." This is a link to an interactive Guardian article from Januaryon state gun laws.
And Mother Jones provides this insight in the profits being made by foreign weapons companies by selling into
the open US market.
What We Didn't Learn from Europe
As the fiscal cliff's "sequestration"
begins to put the brakes on the US economic recovery (e.g., just
88,000 new jobs in March), one wonders at how the austerity/deficit
reduction ideology maintains support among policy makers. This
article from the EU Observeranalyzes the failure of the European austerity measures and argues
that growth "is likely to be subdued at best, recessionary at
worst."
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