Politics

The Changing Politics of Climate Change

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The Changing Politics of Climate Change

This American Life recently devoted an episode to the changing politics of climate change. Here is a description of the show: 

After years of being stuck, the national conversation on climate change finally started to shift — just a little — last year, the hottest year on record in the U.S., with Hurricane Sandy flooding the New York subway, drought devastating Midwest farms, and California and Colorado on fire. Lots of people were wondering if global warming had finally arrived, here at home. This week, stories about this new reality.

“In Guantanamo, Have We Created Something We Can’t Close?”

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“In Guantanamo, Have We Created Something We Can’t Close?”

That was the title of a recent story on NPR’s All Things Considered.  Here is how the story began: 

The crisis at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp keeps growing in size and intensity. According to the military’s own count, 100 of the 166 men held in the prison there are now on hunger strike, and the 27 most in danger of dying are being force-fed.

Last month, guards had to forcibly subdue a camp where even the most cooperative detainees are held.

The hunger strike was triggered by a February search of inmates’ Qurans, though the details are hotly disputed. What’s remarkable, however, is that everyone — including detainees, lawyers and the military — agrees that the real reason for the unrest is simply the frustration that the camp has stayed open so long.

Lollipops, Politics, and Economics: It’s Complicated

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Lollipops, Politics, and Economics: It’s Complicated

NPR’s Planet Money recently ran a story titled “The Lollipop War.” The story illustrates why regulating economic policy can be difficult.

Sugar costs more in the U.S. than in the rest of the world. If you’re in the candy business — if, say, you make 10 million lollipops a day — that’s a big deal.

On today’s show, we visit a candy factory in Ohio (where they want U.S. sugar to be cheaper) and a sugar-beet field in Minnesota (where they don’t). And, perhaps inevitably, we hear from Washington, where the fight over sugar has been playing out for years.

Is Islam More Violent Than Other Major Religions?

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Is Islam More Violent Than Other Major Religions?

This was the topic being debated in the wake of the Boston Bombings on Real Time with Bill Maher. On its face, this proposition appears patently offensive.  However, Maher debated

Brian Levy, the director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University in San Bernardino, about the Boston Marathon Bombers’ Muslim faith playing a role in their terrorism

“It’s not like people who are Muslim who do wacky things have a monopoly on it,” Levy claimed. “We have hypocrites across faiths, Jewish, Christian who say they’re out for God and end up doing not so nice things.”

Maher, true to form, called his guest out and said his premise was “liberal bullshit.”

Maher concedes the obvious, that not all Muslims are terrorists.  Instead, Maher makes a slightly more subtle argument, that Islamic extremists are more violent than Christian and Jewish extremists.  

Is this empirically true? If so, does it mean anything? Does admitting this “truth” cause more harm than good? Undoubtedly, Levy’s point is also true, that such a stereotype harms the vast majority of peaceful Muslims.   

Boston Bombings Coverage: The Ugly

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Boston Bombings Coverage: The Ugly

Yesterday’s post featured Part II of our three-part series “Boston Bombings Coverage: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.”  Part II, “The Bad,” was Jon Stewart’s satire of CNN’s embarrassing Boston bombings blunder.   Part I, “The Good,” featured  Fareed Zakaria’s shrewd take on the Boston bombings.  Today’s post discusses another Jon Stewart clip and “The Ugly”–Fox News contributors falling over themselves to shred the Constitution in wake of the Boston Bombings.