The Triumph of New-Age Medicine "Medicine has long decried acupuncture, homeopathy, and the like as dangerous nonsense that preys on the gullible. Again and again, carefully controlled studies have shown alternative medicine to work no better than a placebo. But now many doctors admit that alternative medicine often seems to do a better job of making patients well, and at a much lower cost, than mainstream care—and they’re trying to learn from it." [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jun 15, 2011 -
278 comments
to gather information about Americans' phone records --
... the NSA had approached the company (Qwest) about participating in a warrantless surveillance program to gather information about Americans' phone records.
...Nacchio's account, which places the NSA proposal at a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, suggests that the Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 attacks have been cited by the government as the main impetus for its warrantless surveillance efforts. ... -- The Administration's crimes and illegal spying on all of us and Quest's punishment for not going along with their plans.
posted by amberglow
on Oct 13, 2007 -
76 comments
Tracked In America --
the stories of 25 individuals who have been targeted by the U.S. government. The stories span from World War I to the post-9/11 world.
posted by amberglow
on Jan 23, 2007 -
4 comments
Drugs on the Rez. It's a hell of a life going from utter poverty, where your mom gets you drunk so you'll stop complaining about being hungry, to being able to buy your kids toys with $100 accessories and sending them to private schools, to going back to literally not having a quarter to call your dad. In this case, the money came from Canadian
oxycontin. It's not just Native Americans who are targeted by the authorities. It's also
Indians. There's a pretty good newish book on the subject of black markets,
Illicit. Laos' opium market is apparently gone -- in favor of
meth and Afghanistan's
market is black in name only, so why keep up the
facade?
posted by raaka
on Feb 20, 2006 -
14 comments
Leonard Peltier...three decades of freedom denied. Thirty years ago today—February 6, 1976—the Canadian government arrested Leonard Peltier...later extraditing him to the U.S. for trial (sic).
Some Peltier
FAQ. Another
informative site. How the
other side sees it. Peltier and the American Indian Movement (
AIM). Sign the online
petition.
As Dylan sang about
Hurricane: "To see him obviously framed couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land where justice is a game."
posted by mickeyz
on Feb 6, 2006 -
40 comments
Naïve in Thailand: The misadventures of an unprepared 43-year-old Brit who drops everything to try and help with tsunami rebuilding. Pet peeve? "The only real irritation has been the American Christian volunteers."
posted by NortonDC
on Jan 16, 2005 -
88 comments
Europe versus America (PDF) is a report by a Swedish public policy institute comparing the two economies, concluding that "If the European Union were a state in the USA it would belong to the poorest group of states." The
WSJ has read the report, and highlights that "Most Americans have a standard of living which the majority of Europeans will never come anywhere near [...]. in the U.S. a large 45.9% of the 'poor' own their homes, 72.8% have a car and almost 77% have air conditioning, which remains a luxury in most of Western Europe. The average living space for poor American households is 1,200 square feet. In Europe, the average space for all households, not just the poor, is 1,000 square feet.". With a
looming demographic crisis in Europe to boot, will the EU be able to implement much-needed reforms to save their welfare-state system before it is too late?
posted by dagny
on Jun 20, 2004 -
118 comments
Fools for Communism: "the world’s final redoubt of communism is not Havana or Pyongyang but American college campuses. 'The nostalgic afterlife of communism in the United States has outlived most of the real Communist regimes around the world....
A sizable cadre of American intellectuals now openly applaud and apologize for one of the bloodiest ideologies of human history, and instead of being treated as pariahs, they hold distinguished positions in American higher education and cultural life.'" Here's also History News Network's
interview with the authors of
"In Denial: Historians, Communists and Espionage":
"The facts of history that they [communist sympathizers] got wrong can be, in their view, rationalized, redefined, minimized, or otherwise set aside in service to the idealized future they seek.
Many have learned no lessons from the failure of communism; they will ardently pursue the same goals by the same means, albeit under new names."
posted by 111
on May 7, 2004 -
127 comments
Those towering Dutchmen The height of the average American is roughly the same as it was during the Revolutionary war. The heights of many northwestern Europeans continue to shoot up. Is this simply genetics at work, or could Bush and the Republicans possibly be at fault here?
posted by rks404
on Mar 30, 2004 -
38 comments
Kick A Brit In The Nuts: We've heard enough about anti-Americanism. What about anti-British feeling? Check out the
USian website. Is there still a lingering, post-colonial resentment in the U.S., Australia and South Africa? Why not, apparently, in Canada or New Zealand? Is it anti-
British, i.e. including the Scots and the Welsh, or just anti-
English? Finally, is
Usian the best collective noun for citizens of the U.S.A.? Will
American eventually become politically incorrect, even though no one calls a Canadian an American? Sorry about so many questions. Me confused European!
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Sep 16, 2003 -
64 comments
why americans will believe almost anything. keys to effective spin control / public relations : "dehumanize the attacked party by labeling and name calling... speak in glittering generalities using emotionally positive words... when covering something up, don't use plain English; stall for time; distract... get endorsements from celebrities, churches, sports figures, street people - anyone who has no expertise in the subject at hand the 'plain folks' ruse: us billionaires are just like you... when minimizing outrage, don't say anything memorable... when minimizing outrage, point out the benefits of what just happened... when minimizing outrage, avoid moral issues."
posted by crunchland
on Jun 23, 2003 -
43 comments
From a European Perspective "President Bush recently declared that the U.S. was "the single surviving model of human progress." Maybe some Americans think this self-evident, but the rest of us see it as a clumsy arrogance born of ignorance. "
Is this something many Americans need to hear but don't want to listen? Personally I appreciated Mr. Eno's honest and candid observations. And no, I don't think he hates America.
posted by nofundy
on Jan 23, 2003 -
98 comments
How the world sees Americans. "They readily distinguish between the official face of the American government (who they tend to disagree with and fear) and American people, pop culture and values (which they tend to adore and emulate)." "It's the world's superpower ... that has a childlike understanding of everyone else."
Journalist Mark Hertsgaard travelled the globe gathering opinions about the U.S. He talks about the surprising results.
posted by gazingus
on Nov 6, 2002 -
108 comments
The brouhaha that erupted in Britain last month when it was learned that the prestigious Booker Prize might be opened to American writers by 2004, displays a British inferiority complex and underscores the remarkable persistence of preconceptions that Britain and the United States hold about each other. But it's about ideas and styles and even language being swapped and appropriated across the globe. It's about artists picking from a smorgasbord of techniques and influences to try to get a handle on an increasingly fragmented and cacophonous reality, and in doing so creating a new wave of writing that is richer for its multicultural mingling of styles and voices, its voracious mixing of the high and low, the cerebral and street-smart, the old and the new. Just like in MeFi.
posted by semmi
on Jun 14, 2002 -
17 comments
Would you sign your name to this statement? Why doesn't it appear in an American media outlet?
posted by nofundy
on Jun 14, 2002 -
70 comments
Why Europeans And Arabs Hate America And Israel: In this brash, provocative essay for
The Weekly Standard, good old
David Brooks blames what he calls
bourgeoisophobia. He may have gone too far in his desire to make his point, but there's
something in what he says. Is it envy? Is it anti-semitism? Is it hypocrisy pure and simple? There's definitely a ressurgence of the pushy, garish, ostentatious and arrogant "ugly American" stereotype after September 11. Apart from the conservative
Daily Telegraph and
Spectator, it's becoming more and more difficult for Atlanticists such as myself to avoid ritual America-bashing in the European mainstream press. What in the
hell is going on? My feeling is that Americans themselves are going out of their way to reaffirm their way of life and reinforce those prejudices. It's as if you
vont to be alone. Or is it, as I suspect, just us? [
More inside]
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Apr 14, 2002 -
84 comments
Terrorism…American Style. Once some of us Americans thought such barbaric acts of human sacrifice were the perfect place to take the kids, wear our Sunday best. For all the talk of a ‘color blind’ society by anti-affirmative action proponents and all the whines those who decry the tyranny of political correctness, there remains this fact: a lot of us not so long ago practiced political terrorism on our fellow citizens. I don’t think the moral high ground we claim is that moral or that high and nor do I think we have repaid the debts we owe to our fellow citizens. These pictures alone are an argument for reparations to my mind--and something we must
never forget are part of our history. Which is why my skin crawls when I see epithets like ‘towelheads’ or ‘ragheads’ bandied about these threads…
posted by y2karl
on Nov 8, 2001 -
70 comments
The Ugly American is becoming harder to distinguish among its European counterparts. What does an American look like, anyway? If you were in a foreign county, could you recognize an American, and if so, how?
posted by Oriole Adams
on Jul 19, 2001 -
150 comments
Americans 'have more sex'. No, that's not a order. But according to Durex, you're meant to be getting it more often, at a younger age. Does this say "as much about bragging as actual sexual behaviour"? Or are we just being led to think that "we are strange if we aren't thinking about sex all the time", as
this Salon piece suggests?
posted by holgate
on Oct 17, 2000 -
8 comments
