Global

The American Condoleezza Rice, 60, Iraq War architect, and the French Christine Lagarde, 58, International Monetary Fund managing director, have little in common beyond being women of power who have contributed to the misery of millions of people they never cared to meet. And now they have another quality in common, cowardice under fire, albeit only verbal fire after they were invited to speak at college commencements.

Rutgers University invited Rice to speak (for $35,000 and an honorary degree) and Smith College invited Lagarde (compensation undisclosed).

You don’t often hear the phrase “feminist anime”, but Sailor Moon was one of the most girl-positive cartoons to ever air in any part of the world. With a main cast of five teenage girls with magical powers fighting evil in modern-day Japan, the show was as much about friendship and acceptance as it was about stopping the bad guys. This year, Toei Animation is revisiting the series with a new show called Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal, but just as important to adults who watched the original show, Viz Media is releasing a new translation that embraces some of the more revolutionary aspects of Sailor Moon.

As events in Eastern Europe continue to unravel and occupy the Obama administration’s attention, questions surrounding Afghanistan have supposedly stabilized. The Bilateral Security Agreement, which involves an explicit, adumbrated relationship between the United States and Afghanistan after the scaling down of American troops, remains unsigned to this day. Afghan President Karzai refused to sign the agreement toward the end of last year and the U.S. has had to wait for Afghanistan’s Election results before proceeding further. Without a clear winner in the Presidential Election, however, the waiting will continue until June’s runoff election.

Neighborhoods are small communities. Communities have bonds. They also have rivalries. They also have gossip and intrigue, albeit on a petty scale. Through the efforts of Mayor Jean Quan and NextDoor.com, the intelligence community and the Oakland Police Department (OPD) are now privy to these tiny pieces of personal information and the larger patters they reveal. Under the auspices of community building and public safety, the public's participation is can now be freely enlisted in the creation of a database of that information.

Through the new partnership, the OPD and the CIA now know what Oakland residents had for breakfast, who their children have a playdate with, and if their dog wanders around the block. NextDoor.com is Oakland's social media surveillance experiment.

Time will tell what the results of that experiment will be. A metropolitan police department can easily fail at social media as the New York Police Department recently showed with their social media debacle with the #myNYPD twitter campaign.

Last month, they emptied the storage locker and took all the displays to individuals’ homes. On Saturday, an immense funeral pyre consumed the
6,800 wooden tombstones.
 
Members of the Northwest Ohio Peace Coalition  (NWOPC) have decided they will no longer mount their “Arlington Midwest” memorial to the Iraqi and Afghan civilians and American soldiers killed in over a  decade of war and occupation.
 
It cost about $1,000 a year to store the massive display, but mostly it’s ending because for some time now, nobody with a highly visible acre of land has been willing to offer their property to set it up.  Fact is, when you ask people on the street, just about everyone says the  wars are over – except for a heartbreaking number who respond, “What war are you talking about?”
 

Georgia State Jim Crow Style Graduations

The systematic practice of discriminating against and segregating Black people, especially as practiced in the American South is called “Jim Crow”. This practice is still alive and well in Georgia. How do I know this you say? In 2009 the Montgomery County High School in GA continued to have two prom nights, as all the years before with the first prom night for “White Only” students and the second prom night for “Black Students”. The Black students, of course, weren’t allowed to attend the “White Only” prom (remind you this was in 2009) however the White students could and some did attend the “Black Prom” against their parents’ wishes. The white parents of Montgomery County High School have made it clear that they don’t want their white children “mixing” with black children in a “social environment”. One white mother stated “those niggers aren’t going to grind on my daughter”. Another said “We’re not having any mixed children in our family”. This was said at a “meeting” at one of the white parents’ home to discuss the situation with several students/parents.