85 = 3,500,000,000
One Stat to Destroy Your Faith in Humanity: The World’s 85 Richest People Own as Much as the 3.5 Billion Poorest
http://world.time.com/2014/01/20/worlds-85-wealthiest-people-as-rich-as-3-5-billion-poorest
States ignore SCOTUS on juvies
The Supreme Court acted in 2010 and 2012 to curtail the use of mandatory life sentences for juveniles, but experts say most states have taken half-measures to carry out the rulings. http://nyti.ms/1f3LTzH
Fisking Obama’s NSA Speech
As promised, here is my deconstruction of Pres. Obama’s Friday speech about his proposed changes to the NSA.
LOS ANGELES TIMES CARTOON: Easy Financing for Trains
I draw cartoons for The Los Angeles Times about issues related to California and the Southland (metro Los Angeles).
This week:
Gov. Jerry Brown has a dream, a dream that would serve as his greatest legacy — a high-speed train that would slash the six-hour drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco to a relaxing ride a smidge over two hours.
It may seem like a pipe dream now, but similar links have transformed other countries. When I visited Paris as a kid, the eastern city of Strasbourg was a weird, remote border town where people spoke German and claimed to like black blood sausages. Thanks to France’s TGV trains, an all-day schlep is a quick day trip — two hours each way — which paved the way for Strasbourg to become an important headquarters for EU bureaucrats and Eurozone business types. Moreover, two hours on the train are not like two hours behind the wheel of a car. You can get a lot of work done on a train.
It doesn’t take a big stretch of imagination to see why Silicon Valley and Hollywood might want to work together more closely.
Unfortunately, Brown is having trouble scaring up the $68 billion estimated total cost of the project.
Fortunately, money seems to be easy to find these days.
California’s parks department, for example, used to be in the habit of squirreling away tens of millions of dollars for a rainy day — in the middle of a budgetary typhoon. Maybe they have a few bucks under the cushions now?
Geeks are willing to fund just about anything on Kickstarter. Sure, people are starving, but how about $67,000 for a statue of the fictional character Robocop?
Then there are like 70 “alternative” cybercurrencies, all based on, well, nothing. If catcoins and dogecoins and sexcoins can convince people to part with real (“fiat”) money, why not traincoin?
Once again, Western countries play it both ways in a civil war
The Syrian government of Pres. Bashar al-Assad claims that Western intelligence agencies are playing a double game: working with Syrian intelligence against the rebels, and also financing and arming them at the same time. http://nyti.ms/19uz8zX
Expanded/Revised Edition of “Silk Road to Ruin” Out Soon
In late March, NBM will release an expanded and revised edition of my 2006 book “Silk Road to Ruin,” my guide to the history and politics of post-Soviet Central Asia: Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Xinjiang (western China).
This paperback edition updates the info from the first edition and adds a new chapter, about my amazing trip to Lake Sarez in Tajikistan.
You can pre-order the paperback edition of “Silk Road” here.
Thomas Friedman out-Friedmans himself
Hilariously and in just about the most tonedeaf writing exercise of all time, Thomas Friedman quotes at length from that mother of all clichés, the “you can’t take the truth” soliloquy by Jack Nicholson. Doesn’t the New York Times have editors? My editors would beat me to death with a rock if I wrote anything that hackneyed. http://nyti.ms/1amKN1Y
Obama Caught Trashing Environment
Eager to sell out to corporations, Obama agrees to TPP trade agreement that guys environment, and allows “finning” – cutting off fins of sharks, then throwing them back in to die. If you doubted Obama is scum, here you are. http://nyti.ms/K0HzaP
