about the site page says:
My new years resolution is to make an infographic on every This American Life ever made. The idea is to expand and add context to the stories and information contained in the shows. Basically, anything I am curious about while listening to the pieces.
Why America never fell in love with soccer By James Montague, CNN “In 1950 we played Besiktas of Istanbul, in St. Louis. They beat us badly, 5-0. It was a tryout as much as anything, and then we faced an English select team with Stanley Matthews playing, in New York, and they won 1-0. Those … Read more
USA: Still failing human rights in the name of global ?war?
Source: Amnesty International
As detentions in the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay enter their ninth year, and the 22 January 2010 deadline for the detention facility?s closure ordered by President Barack Obama approaches only to be missed, the administration has registered ?wins? in two recent court decisions on the detentions. They are Pyrrhic victories for the authorities, however, coming at a high cost to human rights principles and ensuring that Guantánamo will remain synonymous with injustice well into the second year of the Obama administration.
The Status Report: Assessing the Obama Administration?s First Year
Source: The Brookings Institution
During the presidential transition, Brookings scholars wrote a series of policy recommendations in 12 memos to incoming President Barack Obama. In January 2010, one year into the new presidency, our experts rated the progress of the new administration on those same issues in The Status Report, a series of daily commentary and video.
Each of the items below provides an assessment of President Obama?s performance in light of recommendations made during the Presidential Transition.
The New York Times Magazine has a great discussion of the effects of the exportation of American ideas about mental illness, titled appropriately, The Americanization of Mental Illness by Ethan Watters, based on his forthcoming book, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, coming out this month from Free Press. The article is quite good, offering some intriguing cases, such as the rise of virulent, American-style anorexia nervosa in Hong Kong, the effect of possession beliefs on communities? reactions to schizophrenia, and how the narrative of mental illness as ?brain disease? might actually lead to great stigma as it spreads and replaces local understandings. The article is well worth a read, and I?m looking forward to the book.
… Nobel Peace Prize committee…
This morning, President Obama spoke at the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony in Oslo, Norway.
President Obama at the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony
The president of war and peace appears to have pulled off a difficult balancing act, by refusing to bask in the glow of merely being the “anti-Bush”. In Oslo, Obama told his European audience what many Americans will see as some hard truths.
As I was not too excited with his election, I am not too disappointed with Obama’s moves on Afghanistan. In fact, I remember he was repeatingly on Afghanistan instead of Iraq. Now PM Erdoğan will be meeting with President Obama. It is reported that Obama wants soldiers from Turkey. The latter does not intend to give any. I hope TR-US relations will go through another bitter period…
Hugh Pope, the International Crisis Group’s Turkey analyst — who just returned from a two-month fellowship at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington — has a new paper out ahead of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Monday visit to the White House. The paper, published by the Transatlantic Academy, takes a close look at two areas in which Washington has an interest in pushing Ankara along, its normalization process with Armenia and its European Union membership process, and also helpfully unpackages the debate over Turkey’s perceived eastward “drift.”
The American way Irony & contrasts. @ haha.nu The boundaries of Brand Obama by Mark Mardell (the Reporters) The president’s home city has been knocked out in the first round of the vote to choose the host city for the 2016 Olympic Games, even though he and the First Lady travelled to Copenhagen to push … Read more
Obama, who has won the rhetorical propaganda war, is now losing it. Accusations to him are incohere but who cares? Looks like Republicans are striking back:)
@ haha.nu
Some Obama Foes Are Indeed Racists
by Eugene Robinson
I had the chance yesterday to attend Barack Obama’s town hall meeting with some 100 Turkish university students. The event was broadcast live on Turkish television and seemed to me like another successful public diplomacy effort, particularly in a country where America’s image (or at least that of the American government) had sunk very low. Obama clearly has star power — "I love him!" one young woman told me — but listened carefully to the students’ questions and delivered serious, but down to earth, answers.
Found in Girls with Guns . 1925. "Girls’ rifle team, University of Maryland." National Photo. View full size.
ISTANBUL – The use of Turkish ports for the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq appears to be one of the most important items in the agenda of the Foreign Secretary Hillary Clinton’s visit to Ankara this weekend.
