Don’t say the magazine industry is dead yet – there’s still some space left for expansion – like into the world of international terrorism.
Neal Ungerleider at True/Slant found this gem of jihadi literature online. It’s a dense 73 pages and is titled “The Echo of Battle”. (Maybe the magazine industry just needs to work on its titling?) Interestingly, it seems to feature a lot of discussions of movement philosophy as well as some very charming stock imagery:
Each week on The Real Recovery we’re going to ask a big question – and then spend the week figuring out the answer with your help. For next week – we’re looking at those entering the job market for the very first time.
If a tenth of America is unemployed – how hard is it going to be for recent college graduates to get jobs? For college seniors who expect to graduate in 2010? From the National Bureau of Economic Research: “The Career Effects Of Graduating In A Recession”:
Graduating in a recession leads to large initial earnings losses. These losses, which amount to about 9 percent of annual earnings in the initial stage, eventually recede, but slowly — halving within five years but not disappearing until about ten years after graduation.
Starting Monday – we’re going to focus on college graduates. Here’s how you can get involved:
Are you a college senior?: Post a story on The Real Recovery about your job search. Do you have something lined up? Are you just trying not to think about it?
Did you graduate this year?: How’s it been out there in the job market? Have you been able to find work?
Did you graduate years ago?: How was your experience in the economic climate you had? How does it compare to today’s?
You can post your story to Current by clicking the “Post a Story” button on The Real Recovery group page and then just start typing!
And also, if you want to get involved as an investigator – send me a message on Current.
“I don’t know why in this country it’s not allowed to make any kind of criticism of you,” said the student, wearing a long-sleeved blue polo shirt and appearing calm.
“In the past three to five years that I have been reading newspapers, I have seen no criticism of you, not even by the Assembly of Experts, whose duty is to criticize and supervise the performance of the leader,” he said, referring to the clerical body that chooses the country’s supreme leader.
Khamenei countered, “We welcome criticism. We never said not to criticize us. … There’s plenty of criticism that I receive,” according to accounts in state media and on opposition Web sites.
Contrary to the stories of the thousands of protesters and critics of the country’s election results – Mahmoud Vahidnia has faced no repercussions. In fact the incident was originally reported by the Supreme Leader’s office – touting the country’s tolerance for healthy debate. Initially many questioned whether the incident was staged for such a purpose – though opposition leaders are now saying the incident was the real deal.
Here’s some video (albeit in Persian) of the meeting with a little bit of Vahidnia at the podium.
This week we launched The Real Recovery: we’re working with you on a collaborative investigation into the end of the recession. Sure the Dow is up but are things getting better nationwide?
That’s one in ten Americans who are out of work. A lot of people! (Good timing on that unemployment extension, Congress.) This is why we think it’s so important to get behind the numbers to the experiences people are having. Come help us out – tell your story or be one of our investigators on The Real Recovery.
Getting caught up on this story from yesterday in the NY Times: Apparently security forces in Iraq are using bomb detecting “wands” that the Pentagon thinks are useless. All those checkpoints that are supposed to keep Iraq’s cities safe from car bombs might not be having much of an effect at all.
The Iraqis, however, believe passionately in them. “Whether it’s magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs,” said Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, head of the Ministry of the Interior’s General Directorate for Combating Explosives.
Dale Murray, head of the National Explosive Engineering Sciences Security Center at Sandia Labs, which does testing for the Department of Defense, said the center had “tested several devices in this category, and none have ever performed better than random chance.”
Iraq is in the middle of a delicate transition period. Things have begun to seem more stable, less violent. US troops have pulled back to their bases, out of the cities. And blast walls in the capital have even come down. But with recent bombings in Baghdad – bomb detection is a really critical part of maintaining security. The New York Times described the wands as working on the “same principle as a Ouija board” – by the power of user suggestion.
On Tuesday, a guard and a driver for The New York Times, both licensed to carry firearms, drove through nine police checkpoints that were using the device. None of the checkpoint guards detected the two AK-47 rifles and ammunition inside the vehicle.
During an interview on Tuesday, General Jabiri challenged a Times reporter to test the ADE 651, placing a grenade and a machine pistol in plain view in his office. Despite two attempts, the wand did not detect the weapons when used by the reporter but did so each time it was used by a policeman.
The Senate passed a bill yesterday to extend unemployment benefits for the jobless to 14 weeks, and up to 20 weeks for those who live in states with over 8.5 percent unemployment.
More than 1 million people would have had their benefits ended without the extension, according to the National Employment Law Project, a nonpartisan group that tracks the issue. More than 15 million Americans are now unemployed, more than a third of whom have been out of work for more than six months.
Also yesterday we launched The Real Recovery (here’s the intro blog post) – our group investigation into how the recession’s effects are still lingering despite its end. Are you unemployed – directly affected by this news? Let us know. Go join The Real Recovery group and post your personal story.
Tonight is the premiere of a new Vanguard episode: Sri Lanka: Notes from a War on Terror. It is a pretty fantastic piece of journalism and a great exploration of one way to conduct a war on terror: with an iron hand.
We’re launching a big project today on Current News. And we’re going to need your help.
Here’s the idea:
Everybody says we’re headed for an economic recovery, right? The economy grew in the third quarter of this year, the Dow is hovering around 10,000, even Ford managed to make a profit. But the other thing that everybody says is that it’ll be a “jobless” recovery. The economy might grow, but unemployment will stay the same. To say nothing of underemployment – people who have taken lesser positions, started freelancing or stopped looking for new work. While the financial folks celebrate the return of the bull market – what about the rest of us?
SEIU members in CA protest a Toyota plant closure - Getty Images
We want to paint a picture of what’s really going on out there. As the recession comes to an end – what does the recovery really look like? What is the real recovery?
Over the next few months – until the end of the first quarter of next year – we’re going to conduct a special new experimental project to look at the state of our nation. This is where you come in.
My office is in San Francisco. I can give local perspectives from here. But in order to tell this story from every corner of the country – we need your help. What do things look like where you live? Do you have a personal story about how you’ve been affected by the recession?
How you can get involved:
- The big thing is that you can write your own posts in the group “The Real Recovery”. What are we looking for? Local perspectives and personal perspectives. Just a few paragraphs: How are you or your community affected? Every week we’ll have different questions we’re asking – and we want you to post your answers.
- Now, do you want to get really involved? You can become a part of our Current Investigation Network. That means we’ll put you on an email list where sometimes we’ll reach out digging for info or to ask you to help out with collaborative assignments. If you want to be a part of the project by doing a little real journalism – this is the way to do it.
- And as always, you can clip stories and you can weigh in on the comments of posts. We’ll be highlighting stories people post over on the Blog – and that could be yours.
This is a big new step for Current News, and I’m personally very excited about it. I worked on Collective Journalism for two years, our citizen journalism program, and I think this is an even bigger opportunity to get even more people involved in the journalism we make.
So, what’s the next step?
- Join the group: “The Real Recovery”
- Tell us your story – just a few paragraphs. Either post in the comments here – or post your own story to the group. This Friday we’ll feature some of your contributions.
- If you want to be a part of the investigation team – send me a direct message on Current.com.
Both of the most-watched Governors races went to GOP candidates: Virginia and New Jersey. New Jersey is being seen as a blow to the Democratic Party at large since Obama personally came to campaign for Jon Corzine.
During the Beijing Olympics, the People’s Republic of China gave a lot of clout to a new government agency: the weather modification office. Apparently, they’re still at work: kicking up an early snowfall for drought-ridden Beijing.
