The Nation Apr-07-14

Antidote to Putin-Bashing Hearty thanks to Stephen F. Cohen for a long-overdue counterbalance to the media’s endless Putin-bashing: “Media Malpractice?: Distorting Russia” [March 3]. I don’t recall NBC or the other networks being this hypercritical about China and the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Eric Hancock Lindenwold, N.J. _________________________ In “Media Malpractice?” Stephen F. Cohen seems to practice his own brand of “one country” propaganda. I wonder what Anna Politkovskaya, or any of the fifty-six other Russian journalists who have been murdered for their reportage, would think of Cohen’s assertions? Mark Muhich Jackson, Mich. _________________________ Stephen F. Cohen accuses the press generally, The New York Times and even The New York Review of Books of “media malpractice,” i.e., Cold War attitudes. This is a challenge that demands a useful response. What…

@KatrinaNation
If new Cold War there will be no winners, only losers—most of all Ukraine. @EmilySDouglas
I *wish* Sheryl Sand­berg had started a campaign to ban the word “lady.” @EdgeofSports
9-year-old daughter on taking two hours of standardized tests: “It was big, boring, and awful. But other than that, it was great.” @RichardKimNYC
I am not a violent person but when I see someone wearing Google Gla—HULK SMASH HULK SMASH SMASH—sses. . . @JessicaValenti
Huge thanks to
@thenation—esp
@RichardKimNYC & @EmilySDouglas—for being incredible supporters of my work. It’s a bittersweet day.
 @BryceCovert
Women are brought into leadership roles most often if things are heading south.
 @ZoeSCarpenter 
Busing students to pro-charter rally
“feels a little exploitative,” Success Academy teacher says. “They’re 5.”…

The unnecessary confrontation over Ukraine has not only restored the Cold War between the West and Russia, but has done so in an exceedingly dangerous form. The epicenter is no longer in Berlin; it’s on Russia’s borders—with official rhetoric and military gestures on both sides approaching
something like the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. 
 The urgent issue today is to stop the drift toward hot war. Yes, Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea trespasses on international law, though it is difficult to bear US officials’ invocation of a principle that Washington itself has often violated (see, most recently, Kosovo and Iraq, the latter now marking the eleventh anniversary of an illegal US invasion and occupation). Financial and visa sanctions, while inflicting a cost on Russia, will not deter Moscow. As Putin…

Don’t Be a Fracking Gashole. Thus urged one of the signs at a boisterous climate change rally held in front of Baltimore’s City Hall on February 20. As unseasonably warm breezes spun the blades of the tiny windmills many of the 800-plus protesters held aloft, a dozen students carried a mock pipeline made of white plastic through downtown. Black letters on the pipeline announced a new front in America’s escalating battle over fracking and climate change: Stop Cove Point. 
 “We want to make Cove Point as well-known as Keystone,” said Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN), which organized the rally. Keystone XL, to use the official name of the project that has emerged as a litmus test of President Obama’s climate policy, is the pipeline…

The latest statistics from the Federal Bureau of Prisons show that drug arrests are the main cause of incarceration across the nation, a proportion that has been rising steadily over the past four decades. More than 50 percent of the prison population is there because of drug offenses—and 28 percent of those were arrested on marijuana-related charges. According to the Drug Policy Alliance, 61 percent of those in prison for drug offenses are black or Latino, even though people of color and white people have similar drug-use rates. —Von Diaz Colorlines.com…

Let’s start with the obvious: Edward Snowden doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life in Moscow—or Ecuador, Brazil or the other havens he has unsuccessfully pursued. He wants to come back to America—and we need him here. The Obama administration cringes at his every public appearance, and the intelligence community has quite a few questions that only he can answer. Forget the posturing talk of treason and pardons, of transparency and liberty. Snowden knows that no matter how much he arguably served the public interest, he committed serious criminal offenses and will have to be punished. And the government knows that unless he is treated kindly, he’ll be the go-to commentator for the world’s media so long as global surveillance is linked to national security and the international…