Why Buying Cocaine Is Like Donating To The Nazi Party

The Article: Cocaine Is Evil by Erick Vance in Slate.

The Text: I don’t cover the narco war. I don’t even pretend to. I’m a science writer: I go to labs, talk to scientists and policymakers, and occasionally get on boats that take me out to see cool underwater critters. I live in Mexico City, which is about as safe as living in Washington, D.C. I occasionally walk home a little drunk without worrying about my safety any more than I would have in my old home in Berkeley, Calif. And I gotta be honest, I’m happy in my little bubble.

But working here, especially on occasional jaunts to northern Mexico, you can’t avoid the drug story. It’s infused in every interview, every stop at a checkpoint, every street corner, like that stink you can’t get out of the carpet.

Last year I reported a fishing story in Sonora that attempted to put a human face on the seafood industry and the collapse of many populations of key ocean creatures. The idea was that if consumers knew more, they might make more informed choices about what they eat, maybe selecting slightly less destructive options. I was in a relatively quiet part of Mexico in terms of violence but one that is nonetheless a crucial stopover for drugs going north. To states like California, where I’m from. My reporting partner—a photographer named Dominic Bracco who’s spent his share of time amid drug violence—and I always thought it was funny that people in the area seemed incredulous that we were actually reporting about fish. Oh right, sure, “fish.” We have a lot of “fish” here.

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Appalachia Needs Regeneration, Not Christmas Nostalgia

The Article: Appalachia needs regeneration, not Christmas nostalgia by Jeff Biggers in Al-Jazeera.

The Text: A retired coal miner in eastern Kentucky recently sent me an early Christmas card warning. “Whatever you do,” he wrote, “I prefer dirty coal from Santa Claus instead of the annual drivel of ‘Christmas in Appalachia’ pity.”

Pity, poverty, depravity, coal despair, even the picturesque — name your favorite Appalachian or hillbilly caricature of the Mountain South over the past century.

But for a region that once served at the forefront of the American Revolution, the anti-slavery movement and labor and civil rights struggles and that gave us our first American female Nobel laureate for literature (Pearl S. Buck), among other cultural innovators, I think it is time to turn the page on nostalgia and grant Appalachia what it deserves: a regeneration fund.

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Five New Year’s Resolutions For President Obama

The Article: Five New Year’s resolutions for President Obama by Julian Zelizer in CNN.

The Text: As millions of Americans think about how they can do better in 2014 through their New Year resolutions, President Obama might want to make a few of his own.

Although it is true that the president has faced a horrendous political environment — filled with tea party Republicans intent on obstructing every proposal and media that are often too willing to report dubious facts — Obama has not made his situation much easier for himself.
In a number of areas, he might think about strategies that can improve his political standing and put him in a better position for the political fights over immigration, the budget, climate change and foreign policy that loom ahead.

Treat your Democrats well: President Obama has not taken enough care of Democrats on Capitol Hill. Throughout the year, Democrats have continued to express frustration with the White House for putting them into extraordinarily difficult political situations and sometimes leaving them to stand alone as they face the fallout.

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A Former US Drone Program Employee Speaks Out

The Article: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on by Heather Linebaugh in The Guardian.

The Text: Whenever I read comments by politicians defending the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Predator and Reaper program – aka drones – I wish I could ask them a few questions. I’d start with: “How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile?” And: “How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?” Or even more pointedly: “How many soldiers have you seen die on the side of a road in Afghanistan because our ever-so-accurate UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] were unable to detect an IED [improvised explosive device] that awaited their convoy?”

Few of these politicians who so brazenly proclaim the benefits of drones have a real clue of what actually goes on. I, on the other hand, have seen these awful sights first hand.

I knew the names of some of the young soldiers I saw bleed to death on the side of a road. I watched dozens of military-aged males die in Afghanistan, in empty fields, along riversides, and some right outside the compound where their family was waiting for them to return home from the mosque.

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Stop Fawning Over Pope Francis At The Expense Of Women And Gay Rights

The Article: Stop Fawning Over Pope Francis at the Expense of Women and Gay Rights by James Bloodworth in The New Republic.

The Text: Just as some atheists and agnostics long to believe in God, many are more than a little keen to see the best side of the pious, as the bizarre discussion over the Pope’s alleged ‘Marxism’ demonstrates. Even if they themselves don’t believe a word of scripture, many liberals wish to see something of their own politics reflected in the outlook of the Catholic Church—hence the repeated references in recent weeks to the “progressive” Pope and the overrated idea of “liberation theology.”

It is predictable that the reactionary politics of the new Pope should be played down by liberal Catholics in favour of his musings on social justice and global capitalism. What’s so depressing has been the extent to which liberal non-believers have fallen so hook, line and sinker for what is in reality nothing more than a clever repackaging exercise.

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