Destination X
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Mitt Romney and Tax
@nytimes: Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, made $27 million in 2010. They held millions of dollars in a Swiss bank account and millions more in partnerships in the Cayman Islands. His family’s trusts sold thousands of shares in Goldman Sachs that were offered to favored clients when the storied investment house first went public. The couple’s effective federal tax rate for the year worked out to 13.9 percent, a rate typical of households earning about $80,000 a year. Yet the hundreds of pages of tax documents released by Mr. Romney’s campaign on Tuesday morning did not readily reveal any elaborate financial legerdemain or exotic tax shelters. What Mr. Romney’s returns illustrated, instead, was the array of perfectly ordinary ways in which the United States tax code confers advantages on the rich, allowing Mr. Romney to amass wealth under rules very different from those faced by most Americans who take home a paycheck.
(Source: inothernews)
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Redemption Song — Bob Marley, inspired by
Marcus Garvey (in Nova Scotia during October 1937 and published in his Black Man magazine):
We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is your only ruler, sovereign. The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind ..
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”Now, you can call this class warfare all you want. But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense. We don’t begrudge financial success in this country. We admire it. When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it’s not because they envy the rich. It’s because they understand that when I get tax breaks I don’t need and the country can’t afford, it either adds to the deficit, or somebody else has to make up the difference—like a senior on a fixed income; or a student trying to get through school; or a family trying to make ends meet. That’s not right. Americans know it’s not right. They know that this generation’s success is only possible because past generations felt a responsibility to each other, and to their country’s future, and they know our way of life will only endure if we feel that same sense of shared responsibility. That’s how we’ll reduce our deficit. That’s an America built to last.
President Obama, 2012 State of the Union address (via buchino)
(Source: joshuajabbour)
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“In God We Trust”
The religious views of the Founding Fathers are of great interest to propagandists of today’s American right, anxious to push their version of history. Contrary to their view, the fact that the United States was not founded as a Christian nation was early stated in the terms of a treaty with Tripoli, drafted in 1796 under George Washington and signed by John Adams in 1797:
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. I am continually asked why this is, and I do not know. I suppose it is possible that England has wearied of religion after an appalling history of inter- faith violence, with Protestants and Catholics alternately gaining the upper hand and systematically murdering the other lot.
Another suggestion stems from the observation that America is a nation of immigrants. A colleague points out to me that immigrants, uprooted from the stability and comfort of an extended family in Europe, could well have embraced a church as a kind of kin- substitute on alien soil. It is an interesting idea, worth researching further. There is no doubt that many Americans see their own local church as an important unit of identity, which does indeed have some of the attributes of an extended family.
Yet another hypothesis is that the religiosity of America stems paradoxically from the secularism of its constitution. Precisely because America is legally secular, religion has become free enterprise. Rival churches compete for congregations - not least for the fat tithes that they bring - and the competition is waged with all the aggressive hard-sell techniques of the marketplace. What works for soap flakes works for God, and the result is something approaching religious mania among today’s less educated classes. In England, by contrast, religion under the aegis of the established church has become little more than a pleasant social pastime, scarcely recognizable as religious at all. — Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (P. 39-41)
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Deutsche Welle Amharic: Open Letter to Ethiomedia.com
Having read, with a growing sense of disbelief and disillusionment, a number of articles on Ethiomedia alleging self-censorship at DW Amharic, kindly allow me to set the record straight.
One expects a certain degree of harassment from an authoritarian government that has been repeatedly criticized for its human rights record and doctored elections. I did not expect the same, and worse, harassment from people who claim to champion democracy and freedom of speech. While the present political set-up is faulty in many ways, I shudder at the thought that some of these self-proclaimed democrats may well be enlisted in a future one.
While I appreciate some of the more analytical and sober stories on Ethiomedia and similar diaspora news sites, some articles very clearly do not conform to DW editorial standards. You don’t have to be a citizen of a country still struggling with its Nazi past to find the phrase “the fascist Woyane regime in Addis Ababa” horribly inappropriate, no matter how much one may disagree with the present government.
It is our view that some of the content splashed across certain news sites constitutes hate speech, and DW will not allow opinion pieces by its journalists to be posted alongside hate speech. Again, the issue is really quite simple, and has nothing to do with self-censorship. —Ludger Schadomsky, Editor-in-chief, DW Amharic.
Read the rest of the letter, here.
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"Saudi Women Shatter the Lingerie Selling" --@nytimes
A SOCIAL revolution began in Saudi Arabia this month, and it has little if anything to do with the Arab Spring. Women are going to work in lingerie shops. The Ministry of Labor is enforcing a royal decree issued last summer ordering that sales personnel in shops selling garments and other goods, like cosmetics, that are only for women must be female. More than 28,000 women applied for the jobs, the ministry said. Anywhere else in the world, it would not be news that sales assistants in shops selling panties and bras were female. In Saudi Arabia, where women have always been excluded from the public work force, it is a critical breakthrough. This is not just about intimate garments; this is a milestone on the arduous path to employment equality for women in a country where they are systematically excluded from retail activity. —more @nytimes
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Oklahoma-Ethiopia connection
A new documentary film explains how the origins of the $350 million Ethiopian coffee industry are tied to Oklahoma State University, a former school president and a tragic plane crash.
When agriculture professors and students from Oklahoma State University first set foot in Ethiopia in the early 1950s, they found a country secluded from its neighbors and cut off from the rest of the world.
The team found dense forests, rugged mountains, rivers, lakes, plateaus and valleys that was home to 25 million people, many of whom lived in the mountains to hide from would-be invaders. [D-X note: many lived in the highlands not just to hide from invaders, but for many practical reasons; and they had always lived their lives fending off invaders, defending their territories, and securing their independence]
Ethiopians spoke and wrote their own language, Amharic, further isolating them from their neighbors. [D-X note: Ethiopians spoke and still speak more than 70 languages to be sure, Amharic only happens to be the official language that majority of Ethiopians communicate with]
The pioneering Oklahomans were on a mission from Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State University): to share their knowledge of agriculture.
Read more: @NewsOK -
The Book of Mothers
[…] Life for the majority of women is nothing but a constant race, running around in circles while tethered to a peg, carrying children and grandchildren along – until one day they tire and collapse. How then did my own life turn out to be different? Looking back at the many tumultuous stages of Kerala’s past [a state in India], how did I find the courage to pull through those great upheavals, without ever turning back? I have an answer. It was because of the responsibility one felt for the lives around one as much as for one’s own. It was because of a certain view of life which one had. After all, it is such a view of life that we call politics. It must then be those who lack it who tire and lose the race inside that circle.It is reading that created such a view of life for me. Whose reading? Not mine, but that of the many larger-than-life figures around me. To start with, my own father’s. My childhood had its own share of troubles and privations. And not just mine, but that of everyone whose parents did not own land, or were not employed in the British government. Achan was a barber. There were other barbers around, but Achan was different. For one, he was a regular reader of the Kaumudi newspaper. In fact, he would read just about anything that got printed. It made him another kind of man. In those days, people of low financial and social station like us, both men and women, would not use an upper garment. Yet Achan would wear a coat with gold buttons. It was his reading that made him do it.Among my brothers, both Chakrapani and Sarangapani were readers. I lived among them, and in them too, I could sense a difference that I cannot really explain now. Reading does make you different. And it was among these people, who were different from the rest, that I lived the rest of my life. It was as if my life was drenched in their light. Or moved in step with their shadows. That includes great figures like P. Krishnapillai, E.M.S., T.V. Thomas, Meenakshi Ashatti, Kedamangalam Sadanandan, P.J. Antony, Ramankutty Ashan, and others. It was their reading that refined their certainties for themselves. P. Krishnapillai once handed me something, asked me to keep it safe; it was a banned work of E.M.S. I was little then, but it made me realize what a tremendous thing a book was.
— more @Kafila.org
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What exactly does ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ mean?
The widespread use of ‘sub-Sahara Africa’ makes no sense and is undoubtedly a racist geopolitical signature. — @Pambazuka
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China and Soft Power in Sub-Saharan Africa
JoAnne Wagner, a career Foreign Service Officer now serving as the State Department’s Deputy Director for Pakistan, published an article titled ”Going Out”: Is China’s Skillful Use of Soft Power in Sub-Saharan Africa a Threat to U.S. Interests? It appeared in the 1st quarter 2012 edition of Joint Forces Quarterly. —Via @The Official Blog of Amb. David H. Shinn, a former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia (1996-99) and to Burkina Faso (1987-90), now an adjunct professor of international affairs at The George Washington University
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“I’m too old to enjoy this,” I thought. And then remembered I’ve always felt this way about clubs. And I mean all clubs - from the cheesiest downmarket sickbucket to the coolest cutting-edge hark-at-us poncehole. I hated them when I was 19 and I hate them today. I just don’t have to pretend any more.
I’m convinced no one actually likes clubs. It’s a conspiracy. We’ve been told they’re cool and fun; that only “saddoes” dislike them. And no one in our pathetic little pre-apocalyptic timebubble wants to be labelled “sad” - it’s like being officially declared worthless by the state. So we muster a grin and go out on the town in our millions.
Clubs are despicable. Cramped, overpriced furnaces with sticky walls and the latest idiot theme tunes thumping through the humid air so loud you can’t hold a conversation, just bellow inanities at megaphone-level. And since the smoking ban, the masking aroma of cigarette smoke has been replaced by the overbearing stench of crotch sweat and hair wax.
Clubs are such insufferable dungeons of misery, the inmates have to take mood-altering substances to make their ordeal seem halfway tolerable. This leads them to believe they “enjoy” clubbing. They don’t. No one does. They just enjoy drugs.[…] Anyway, back to Saturday night, and apart from the age gap, two other things stuck me. Firstly, everyone had clearly spent far too long perfecting their appearance. I used to feel intimidated by people like this; now I see them as walking insecurity beacons, slaves to the perceived judgment of others, trapped within a self- perpetuating circle of crushing status anxiety. I’d still secretly like to be them, of course, but at least these days I can temporarily erect a veneer of defensive, sneering superiority. I’ve progressed that far.
The second thing that struck me was frightening. They were all photographing themselves. In fact, that’s all they seemed to be doing. Standing around in expensive clothes, snapping away with phones and cameras. One pose after another, as though they needed to prove their own existence, right there, in the moment. Crucially, this seemed to be the reason they were there in the first place. There was very little dancing. Just pouting and flashbulbs.
Surely this is a new development. Clubs have always been vapid and awful and boring and blah - but I can’t remember clubbers documenting their every moment before. Not to this demented extent. It’s not enough to pretend you’re having fun in the club any more - you’ve got to pretend you’re having fun in your Flickr gallery, and your friends’ Flickr galleries. An unending exhibition in which a million terrified, try-too-hard imbeciles attempt to out-cool each other. — Charlie Brooker
(Source: rainbz)
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The paradox of US politics
The idea that the former governor of liberal Massachusetts may not win the primary in a state [South Carolina] where conservative evangelical Christians make up about 60 percent of Republican voters isn’t that surprising.
But Romney’s path to a neck-and-neck finish with former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich has begun to look like a lost opportunity, defined by Romney’s reluctance to reveal more about his vast wealth and his repeated inability to explain why.
When asked whether he would release 12 years of tax returns as his father, George, had done while running for president in 1968, Romney said through a thin smile, “Maybe.”
The answer drew a few catcalls from the conservative audience, and contrasted sharply with how Gingrich deftly turned a question about cheating on his second wife into an attack on the media that drew a standing ovation.
[…] Gingrich’s standing in recent polls suggest that his efforts to win support among evangelical Christian voters have not been damaged much by questions about his personal life.
On Thursday, however, a former wife, Marianne, said in an ABC interview that Gingrich had sought an “open marriage” when he was having an affair in the 1990s with Callista Bisek, who later became Gingrich’s third wife. —read more @Reuters via Yahoo News
![“I’m too old to enjoy this,” I thought. And then remembered I’ve always felt this way about clubs. And I mean all clubs - from the cheesiest downmarket sickbucket to the coolest cutting-edge hark-at-us poncehole. I hated them when I was 19 and I hate them today. I just don’t have to pretend any more.
I’m convinced no one actually likes clubs. It’s a conspiracy. We’ve been told they’re cool and fun; that only “saddoes” dislike them. And no one in our pathetic little pre-apocalyptic timebubble wants to be labelled “sad” - it’s like being officially declared worthless by the state. So we muster a grin and go out on the town in our millions.
Clubs are despicable. Cramped, overpriced furnaces with sticky walls and the latest idiot theme tunes thumping through the humid air so loud you can’t hold a conversation, just bellow inanities at megaphone-level. And since the smoking ban, the masking aroma of cigarette smoke has been replaced by the overbearing stench of crotch sweat and hair wax.
Clubs are such insufferable dungeons of misery, the inmates have to take mood-altering substances to make their ordeal seem halfway tolerable. This leads them to believe they “enjoy” clubbing. They don’t. No one does. They just enjoy drugs.[…] Anyway, back to Saturday night, and apart from the age gap, two other things stuck me. Firstly, everyone had clearly spent far too long perfecting their appearance. I used to feel intimidated by people like this; now I see them as walking insecurity beacons, slaves to the perceived judgment of others, trapped within a self- perpetuating circle of crushing status anxiety. I’d still secretly like to be them, of course, but at least these days I can temporarily erect a veneer of defensive, sneering superiority. I’ve progressed that far.
The second thing that struck me was frightening. They were all photographing themselves. In fact, that’s all they seemed to be doing. Standing around in expensive clothes, snapping away with phones and cameras. One pose after another, as though they needed to prove their own existence, right there, in the moment. Crucially, this seemed to be the reason they were there in the first place. There was very little dancing. Just pouting and flashbulbs.
Surely this is a new development. Clubs have always been vapid and awful and boring and blah - but I can’t remember clubbers documenting their every moment before. Not to this demented extent. It’s not enough to pretend you’re having fun in the club any more - you’ve got to pretend you’re having fun in your Flickr gallery, and your friends’ Flickr galleries. An unending exhibition in which a million terrified, try-too-hard imbeciles attempt to out-cool each other. — Charlie Brooker](http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ly4i6cuQxd1qhhm7zo1_500.png)
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Now on view at Copro Gallery in Santa Monica is a three person show featuring...
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Laughing in Mongolia
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