Clipmarks | jcwylen's clips

China's Humiliation

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:45:24 GMT

clipped by: jcwylen
clipper's remarks: China's current society is contradictory and confusing. Probably most people in China are proud of the Olympics coming to their country. This assuages their feeling of humiliation. At the same time, there remains many violations of human rights that should make individual Chinese feel humiliated.

Clip Source: www.newsweek.com

This history pretty much guarantees that certain traits will express themselves again and again whenever China responds under stress to the outside world. "The question of Western humiliation is always unconsciously inside us," filmmaker Chen Shi-Zheng—whose recent film, "Dark Matter," explores this theme—told me. "There is something almost in our DNA that triggers autonomic, and sometimes extreme, responses to foreign criticism or put-downs." Or as Lu Xun, China's most famous essayist and social critic, lamented almost 75 years ago, "Throughout the ages Chinese have had only one way of looking at foreigners. We either look up to them as gods or down on them as wild animals."

McCain, Obama Overlap on Environment, Immigration, Guantanamo

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:00:42 GMT

clipped by: jcwylen
clipper's remarks: Similar to article in LA Times

Clip Source: www.bloomberg.com

By Kristin Jensen

June 9 (Bloomberg) -- The next president plans to issue new policies to address global warming, overhaul immigration laws, advocate more government transparency and close the U.S. dete

System of Neglect

Mon, 12 May 2008 00:26:55 GMT

clipped by: jcwylen
clipper's remarks: Immigration Detention
A Washington Post study has found unconscionable treatment of immigrants who have not been accused of a crime but are awaiting a hearing on their right to remain in this country.
"The medical neglect they endure is part of the hidden human cost of increasingly strict policies in the post-Sept. 11 United States and a lack of preparation for the impact of those policies. The detainees have less access to lawyers than convicted murderers in maximum-security prisons and some have fewer comforts than al-Qaeda terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."

Clip Source: www.washingtonpost.com

As Tighter Immigration Policies Strain Federal Agencies, The Detainees in Their Care Often Pay a Heavy Cost

Iraq is different

Sat, 10 May 2008 00:23:58 GMT

clipped by: jcwylen
clipper's remarks: Iraq remains an unbalanced policy equation, by Adam Blickstein

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

One can claim that any faltering policy area, whether it be education, health care, or energy, can be fixed through expending unlimited resources, maintaining vigilant patience and demanding an open-ended time table. This might be an acceptable portion of any policy, but it is just that: merely a portion of the whole. Yet in regards to Iraq, this is the sole predicate to the rationale behind maintaining a presence there. This is why, in the abstract, the typical Bush administration and John McCain argument that we need more time and patience and resources (both human and monetary) in Iraq rings hollow. (Yes I know war is itself unique from any other policy area. Yet, it's still instructive to examine the Iraq war from this perspective because it provides another context from which to examine why our Iraq policy has largely been a failure.)

Partners in Health

Fri, 02 May 2008 13:36:29 GMT

clipped by: jcwylen

Clip Source: www.pih.org

On Sunday, May 4 at 7 pm (EDT/PDT), Partners In Health will be featured on CBS’s 60 Minutes.

Racism in America

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:48:52 GMT

clipped by: jcwylen

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

My esteemed brother Dr. Cornell West writes about Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time" saying that "(he) spoke the deep truth that democratic individuality demands that white Americans give up their deliberate ignorance and willful blindness about the weight of white supremacy in America. Only then can a genuine democratic community emerge in America."

Obama's Bad Image

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 23:34:00 GMT

clipped by: jcwylen
clipper's remarks: Clinton wil do anything to be elected.

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

But in the closing weeks of the Pennsylvania primary, the eruptions of a series of mini-crises resulted in Obama's opposition defining him as an out-of-touch and unpatriotic elitist, half radical Christian, half Muslim-in-disguise.

Old Age and Depression

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:46:38 GMT

clipped by: jcwylen
clipper's remarks: Pretty obvious. And of course, if you are depressed, it is difficult to maintain these protective factors.

Clip Source: psychcentral.com

“Candidate protective factors include close personal relationships, rewarding occupations or meaningful hobbies, physical vigor and vitality, economic independence, and spiritual well-being. Processes related to aging might inexorably erode some of these protective factors.”
The researchers urge more study of the relationships between personality, age and first lifetime episodes of depression.

Tags: depression, aging

The Mistress's Daughter

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:58:00 GMT

clipped by: jcwylen
clipper's remarks: have not read this.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

THE MISTRESS’S DAUGHTER, by A. M. Homes. (Penguin, $14.) When she was 31, Homes, a novelist, learned that the woman who had given her up for adoption was looking for her. “In my dreams, my birth mother is ... beautiful, incredibly competent,” Homes writes in this fascinating memoir. The reality was very different: her biological mother was incredibly needy, and her biological father demanded a DNA test. As a “document of a flawed, incoherent self,” the book is “fierce and eloquent,” our reviewer, Katie Roiphe, said.

Tags: books, non-ficiton, good review

This Human Season

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:52:03 GMT

clipped by: jcwylen
clipper's remarks: I really enjoyed this book.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

THIS HUMAN SEASON, by Louise Dean. (Harvest/Harcourt, $14.) Set in Belfast during the Troubles of the 1970s, Dean’s second novel introduces us, in alternating chapters, to a local woman whose 19-year-old son is imprisoned at Long Kesh and to a retired British soldier who takes a job there as a guard. “With remarkable even-handedness, she evokes the day-to-day struggles of English and Irish, Protestant and Roman Catholic, as they try to get on with their lives while the world around them goes insane,” our reviewer, Paul Gray, said.

Tags: books, ireland

Right to Privacy

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:43:17 GMT

clipped by: jcwylen

Clip Source: bigbrotherawards.eu.org

5. Lifetime Menace - Prix Spécial du Jury: Google Inc. wins for its overwhelming capacity to retain personal data of internet users, for having been rated the "worst company" among worldwide Internet groups surveyed last year by Privacy International, for not compling to the EU Data Protection directives, and for filtering search results for political reasons. Google founders Larry Page and Steve Brin, as well as Global Privacy Officer Peter Fleischer, were named for their personnal contribution. French Ministry of Education came second, for its database "base élèves" aimed at registering primary schools pupils (from 3 to 10 years old), and the Ministry of Culture and Communication came 3rd for its repeated laws and decrees aiming to filter the internet, organise global monitoring of internet users without court warrants, and being complacent to the music and film industry lobbies in their fight against online piracy.