Salon: U.N. expert warns racism, police threaten civil rights in U.S., slams biased justice system

A United Nations human rights experts has warned that racism threatens Americans’ basic civil rights.

“African-Americans are subjected to systematic police harassment — and sometimes much worse — often for doing nothing more than walking down the street or gathering in a group,” wrote U.N. special rapporteur Maina Kiai on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, after a recent trip to the U.S. [...]

Kiai published a detailed, 6,500-word summary of his experience, which warns of extreme “racial, social and economic inequality, which are often intertwined.” It also shows how harsh, police state-like conditions in the U.S. are threatening the basic rights of Americans, particularly Americans of color.

His report was mostly ignored by the U.S. media. [...]

He highlighted the double standards of the U.S. justice system. “Wall Street bankers looted billions of dollars through crooked schemes, devastating the finances of millions of Americans and saddling taxpayers with a massive bailout bill,” Kiai wrote.

But no Wall Street executives were punished. “Instead, criminal justice resources go towards enforcing a different type of law and order, targeting primarily African-Americans and other minorities.” [...]

“The outcry for accountability for police shootings is deafening. Given the attention to this issue and its importance, it is incomprehensible that a modern society such as the United States lacks official records that accurately document the number of victims of such shootings, the precise circumstances and the follow-up actions taken,” Kiai said.

The U.N. rights expert also criticized the U.S. government’s time and place restrictions on protests, which he said “not conform with international law.” Almost all major U.S. cities require permits for protests. These violates international law and standards, he said.

read the article 

The Atlantic: The Time Is Ripe for Détente, 2.0

As a starting point, the debate should assess whether NATO’s relentless expansion—begun during the 1990s and proceeding in waves, with Montenegro’s eventual accession, once-Soviet Ukraine and Georgia having been promised membership, and even historically neutral Finland and Sweden now pondering participation—played a role in Russia’s increasingly aggressive posturing toward the West. As the world’s most powerful military alliance slid up to Russia’s borders, the West couldn’t have expected Putin to sit idle. After all, what would the United States do if Russia began stationing troops in northern Mexico? History offers a precedent: When the Soviet Union deployed nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962, President John F. Kennedy took the world to the brink of nuclear war to force their withdrawal. [...]

From Putin’s point of view, NATO’s campaign in support of the rebels in Libya in 2011 appeared duplicitous, to say the least. The intervention exceeded what the United States had agreed to with Russia under the relevant U.N. Security Council resolution, and led to the death of Muammar Qaddafi. Then came Vice President Joe Biden’s stated opposition—declared in Moscow, no less—to Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012, Putin’s suspicion that the United States had backed mass protests against him in 2011 and 2012, and the occasional backhanded insult from President Obama (who has said Putin acts like a “bored kid in the back of a classroom,” and that Russia is no more than a “regional power” that threatens its neighbors out of “weakness”). Seen through Russia’s eyes, this adds up to decades of humiliation, dished out by a triumphalist United States eager to draw attention to its shrunken sphere of influence, question the legitimacy of its government, and treat the country as if it were, in Putin’s words, “vassal” of the West—not the Great Power it had been since the days of Peter the Great.

read the article 

Reuters: Despite sanctions, North Korea prices steady as Kim leaves markets alone

The relative stability of both prices and the currency - in contrast to the volatility seen under his father Kim Jong Il - is partly attributable to the younger Kim's hands-off approach to an increasingly market-based economy and also, experts say, suggests some policy learning in Pyongyang.

Once reliant on a Soviet-style centrally-planned economy, North Korea is now home to a thriving system of semi-legal but policed markets known as "jangmadang", where individuals and wholesalers can buy and sell privately-produced or imported goods.

"Since Kim Jong Un came to power, there has been no control or crackdown on the jangmadang," said Kang Mi-jin, a North Korean defector who works at the Seoul-based Daily NK website and regularly speaks to market sources in the North. [...]

North Korea's centrally-planned rationing system never recovered from a devastating famine in the 1990s. From April to June this year the state handed out just 360 grammes of rations per person per day, the lowest amount for five years, according to a recent World Food Programme (WFP) report.

read the article 

The Guardian: Waste of resources is biggest threat to planet, warns Scottish environment agency

Scotland’s environment agency has warned the country’s industries and farmers that their waste and inefficiency is now the biggest threat to the environment, overtaking pollution.

In a marked shift in strategy, the regulator’s chief executive, Terry A’Hearn, will urge businesses, farmers and manufacturers to adopt a “one planet prosperity” policy designed to cut their energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, waste and resource use. [...]

A’Hearn argues that the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has largely won the battle against so-called gross pollution from onshore sources. Air, water and soil pollution is now far below the levels seen decades ago. [...]

The aquaculture sector would be among the first to be approached by A’Hearn to establish new “sustainable growth agreements” which he said will be central to his new one planet strategy.

Based partly on a similar scheme he rolled out in Northern Ireland, voluntary but formal agreements would be struck with the most successful or progressive companies, or possibly on an industry-wide basis.

Companies which became sector champions would set targets or goals to increase efficiency and cut down waste; it would allow them to publicise that role in their marketing. Some highly integrated sectors such as the whisky industry, which has lately adopted more ambitious environmental policies, could sign industry-wide sustainability deals.

read the article 

The Guardian: Same old, same old. How the hipster aesthetic is taking over the world

It’s no accident that these places look similar. Though they’re not part of a chain and don’t have their interior design directed by a single corporate overlord, these coffee shops have a way of mimicking the same tired style, a hipster reduction obsessed with a superficial sense of history and the remnants of industrial machinery that once occupied the neighbourhoods they take over. And it’s not just London and Manchester – this style is spreading across the world, from Bangkok to Beijing, Seoul to San Francisco.

It’s not just coffee shops, either. Everywhere you go, seemingly hip, unique spaces have a way of looking the same, whether it’s bars or restaurants, fashion boutiques or shared office spaces. A coffee roaster resembles a WeWork office space. How can all that homogeneity possibly be cool?

In an essay for the American tech website The Verge, I called this style “AirSpace”. It’s marked by an easily recognisable mix of symbols – like reclaimed wood, Edison bulbs, and refurbished industrial lighting – that’s meant to provide familiar, comforting surroundings for a wealthy, mobile elite, who want to feel like they’re visiting somewhere “authentic” while they travel, but who actually just crave more of the same: more rustic interiors and sans-serif logos and splashes of cliche accent colours on rugs and walls. [...]

Taste is also becoming globalised, as more people around the world share their aesthetic aspirations on the same massive social media platforms, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or Foursquare, with their hundreds of millions or billions of users. As algorithms shape which content we consume on our feeds, we all learn to desire the same things, which often happens to involve austere interiors, reclaimed wood, and Edison bulbs, like a metastasised real-life version of Kinfolk magazine or Monocle.

read the article