Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Twin Cities fireworks displays are great, unless you’re a timid dog or a human being with asthma, in which case – not so much. According to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, particulate matter levels were elevated to “orange alert” levels because of all the fireworks, so people with sensitive lungs and hearts should not exert themselves. (By tomorrow, the level should be back down to yellow alert.) Continue reading →

Over at National Public Radio, Ombudsman Alicia Shepard is taking plenty of reader/listener criticism for her defense of NPR’s refusal to call torture by its name. The issue continues to be relevant, because torture continues, in Guantanamo and in the United States.
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Policing smarter Inside descriptions of the Metro Gang Strike Force make it sound like part of the problem rather than a possible solution, with officers meting out punishment-via-forfeiture. In other big cities, a multi-faceted policing approach called Ceasefire successfully targets gang violence and drug-dealing. Why not here?
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Murder mysteries are my usual summer reading fare, but this vacation was different. I had a stack of books on my table, some waiting for months, and memoirs won out.
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BBC reports reliable allegations of prisoner mistreatment at the U.S. detention center at Bagram air base in Afghanistan from 2002-2008. The indicia of reliability seem high – interviews with 27 released prisoners, who are not facing any charges; each interviewed in isolation from the others; similar reports of “physical abuse, the use of stress positions, excessive heat or cold, unbearably loud noise, being forced to remove clothes in front of female soldiers.”
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‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty told Alice in Lewis Carrol’s Through the Looking Glass, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.'” In a similar manner, Governor Pawlenty casts himself as a heroic defender of education, promising no cuts to K-12 funding, while at the same time making “shifts” in funding that, in fact, will decrease the total amount that all schools have to spend on education.
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Thursday, June 18, 2009 – Reposted at the poet’s request
For The Homeland (A Poem for Bagua)
by Rodrigo Sanchez-Chavarria

With my hands I write these words for the homeland

Today my heart stopped
My blood spilled
On land that will be given
To oil companies that will rape it
Brand it, and sell it with my name on it
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