Jesus Malverde
Jesus Malverde's JournalEU weighs new approach towards Russia in wake of Ukraine crisis
Source: Reuters
European Union foreign ministers tried to map out a new strategy towards Russia at talks in Athens on Saturday, pledging to keep a tough stance over its tensions with Ukraine, while steering clear of provoking Moscow into further conflict.
Since Russia's annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, the European Union has imposed sanctions against the closest allies of President Vladimir Putin, and Group of Seven governments have suspended top-level contacts with Russia.
Further sanctions are being prepared in case the conflict escalates. But in the near term, the EU's 28 governments will have to balance the need to preserve stability to east of the bloc, while strengthening ties with former Soviet republics, a process that has drawn ire from Moscow.
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said it was not in the European Union's interest to fuel confrontation with Russia, already at its highest since the Cold War.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/05/us-ukraine-crisis-eu-russia-idUSBREA340FU20140405
Who knew neuland really meant it when she said "F the EU"
Poll: Elizabeth Warren is the ‘hottest’
If the 2016 presidential race were a game of “hot or not,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren would be winning with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton close behind, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie would be losing ground, according to a new poll.
When Americans were asked to give prominent politicians a score, zero to 100, of how “warm,” or favorable, they feel toward that person, the Massachusetts Democratic senator was the highest-rated of the bunch with a “temperature” of 48.6, according to a Quinnipiac poll out Thursday.
Clinton was in second place at 47.8, Republican Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan followed at 47.4, Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was at 47.1 and Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker rounded out the top five with 46.6.
The Republican governor of New Jersey was in ninth place, at 45.2. That was more than a 10-point drop from the 55.5 he had when he led the poll in January, before news of the George Washington Bridge scandal rocked his office.
Read More: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/elizabeth-warren-2016-elections-poll-105338.html
The mainstreaming of mindfulness meditation
Why is mindfulness so popular?It appeals to people seeking an antidote to life in work-obsessed, tech-saturated, frantically busy Western culture. There is growing scientific evidence that mindfulness meditation has genuine health benefits — and can even alter the structure of the brain, so the technique is drawing some unlikely devotees. Pentagon leaders are experimenting with mindfulness to make soldiers more resilient, while General Mills has installed a meditation room in every building of its Minneapolis campus. Even tech-obsessed Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are using it as a way to unplug from their hyperconnected lives. "Meditation always had bad branding for this culture," says Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter. "But to me, it's a way to think more clearly and to not feel so swept up."
What is mindfulness, exactly?
It's a meditation practice central to the Buddha's teachings, which has now been adapted by Western teachers into a secular self-help technique. One of the pioneers in the field is Jon Kabat-Zinn, an MIT-educated molecular biologist who began teaching mindfulness in the 1970s to people suffering from chronic pain and disease. The core of mindfulness is quieting the mind's constant chattering — thoughts, anxieties, and regrets. Practitioners are taught to keep their attention focused on whatever they're doing at the present moment, whether it's eating, exercising, or even working. The most basic mindfulness practice is sitting meditation: You sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes, and focus your awareness on your breath and other bodily sensations. When thoughts come, you gently let them go without judgment and return to the focus on the breath. Over time, this practice helps people connect with a deeper, calmer part of themselves, and retrain their brains not to get stuck in pointless, neurotic ruminations about the past and future that leave them constantly stressed, anxious, or depressed.
Does it work?
Scientific research has shown that mindfulness appears to make people both happier and healthier. Regular meditation can lower a person's blood pressure and their levels of cortisol, a stress hormone produced by the adrenal gland and closely associated with anxiety. Meditation can also increase the body's immune response, improve a person's emotional stability and sleep quality, and even enhance creativity. When combining mindfulness with traditional forms of cognitive behavioral therapy, patients in one study saw a 10 to 20 percent improvement in the mild symptoms of their depression — the same progress produced by antidepressants. Other studies have found that up to 80 percent of trauma survivors and veterans with PTSD see a significant reduction in troubling symptoms. Walter Reed National Military Medical Center is also teaching mindfulness as a form of treatment for patients with substance abuse problems.
Why does it work?
MRI scans have shown that mindfulness can alter meditators' brain waves — and even cause lasting changes to the physical structure of their brains (see below). Meditation reduces electrical activity and blood flow in the amygdala, a brain structure involved in strong, primal emotions such as fear and anxiety, while boosting activity regions responsible for planning, decision-making, and empathy. These findings have helped attract the more skeptical-minded. "There is a swath of our culture who is not going to listen to someone in monk's robes," says Richard J. Davidson, founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, "but they are paying attention to scientific evidence."
Read More: http://www.theweek.com/article/index/259351/the-mainstreaming-of-mindfulness-meditation
The average American now consumes 63 gigabytes of content, or more than 150,000 words, over 13.6 hours of media use every single day — and all indications are that those numbers will keep climbing.
The Unemployment Puzzle: Where Have All the Workers Gone?
A big puzzle looms over the U.S. economy: Friday's jobs report tells us that the unemployment rate has fallen to 6.7% from a peak of 10% at the height of the Great Recession. But at the same time, only 63.2% of Americans 16 or older are participating in the labor force, which, while up a bit in March, is down substantially since 2000. As recently as the late 1990s, the U.S. was a nation in which employment, job creation and labor force participation went hand in hand. That is no longer the case.
What's going on? Think of the labor market as a spring bash you've been throwing with great success for many years. You've sent out the invitations again, but this time the response is much less enthusiastic than at the same point in previous years.
One possibility is that you just need to beat the bushes more, using reminders of past fun as "stimulus" to get people's attention. Another possibility is that interest has shifted away from your big party to other activities.
Economists are sorting out which of these scenarios best explains the slack numbers on labor-force participation—and offers the best hope of reversing them. Is the problem cyclical, so that, if we push for faster growth, workers will come back, as they have in the past with upturns in the business cycle? Or do deeper structural problems in the economy have to be fixed before we can expect any real progress? To the extent that problems are related to retirement or work disincentives that are either hard to change or created by policy, familiar monetary or fiscal policies may have little effect—a point getting too little attention in Washington.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304441304579477341062142388?mod=WSJ_hppMIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304441304579477341062142388.html%3Fmod%3DWSJ_hppMIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond
CIA official dies in apparent suicide
Source: Daily Mail
A CIA official died in a reported suicide this week from injuries caused by jumping off a building.
CIA spokesman Christopher White confirmed the death to The Washington Free Beacon and said it did not occur at CIA headquarters.
A CIA official died in a reported suicide this week from injuries caused by jumping off a building.
CIA spokesman Christopher White confirmed the death to The Washington Free Beacon and said it did not occur at CIA headquarters.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2597684/CIA-official-dies-apparent-suicide.html
I ran the CIA interrogation program. No matter what the Senate report says, I know it worked.
People might think it is wrong for me to condemn a report I haven’t read. But since the report condemns a program I ran, I think I have justification.
On Thursday, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to declassify and release hundreds of pages of its report on U.S. terrorist interrogation practices. Certain senators have proclaimed how devastating the findings are, saying the CIA’s program was unproductive, badly managed and misleadingly sold. Unlike the committee’s staff, I don’t have to examine the program through a rearview mirror. I was responsible for administering it, and I know that it produced critical intelligence that helped decimate al-Qaeda and save American lives.
The committee’s staff members started with a conclusion in 2009 and have chased supportive evidence ever since. They never spoke to me or other top CIA leaders involved in the program, or let us see the report. Without reviewing it, I cannot offer a detailed rebuttal. But there are things the public should consider.
The first is context. The detention and interrogation program was not built in a vacuum. It was created in the months after Sept. 11, 2001, when nearly 3,000 men, women and children were murdered. It was constructed shortly after Richard Reid narrowly missed bringing down an airliner with explosives hidden in his shoes. It continued while U.S. intelligence learned that rogue Pakistani scientists had met with Osama bin Laden to discuss the possibility of creating crude nuclear devices.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-ran-the-cia-interrogation-program-no-matter-what-the-senate-report-says-i-know-it-worked/2014/04/04/69dd4fae-bc23-11e3-96ae-f2c36d2b1245_story.html
A confession of sorts from a torturer. If we allow these crimes to remain unpunished we will all be complicit in torture and murder.
CIA Official Dies in Apparent Suicide
A senior CIA official has died in an apparent suicide this week from injuries sustained after jumping off a building in northern Virginia, according to sources close to the CIA.
CIA spokesman Christopher White confirmed the death and said the incident did not take place at CIA headquarters in McLean, Va.
“We can confirm that there was an individual fatally injured at a facility where agency work is done,” White told the Washington Free Beacon. “He was rushed to a local area hospital where he subsequently died. Due to privacy reasons and out of respect for the family, we are not releasing additional information at this time.”
A source close to the agency said the man who died was a middle manager and the incident occurred after the man jumped from the fifth floor a building in Fairfax County.
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/cia-official-dies-in-apparent-suicide/
Three men sentenced to death for Mumbai gang rapes
Three men were sentenced to death on Friday for two gang-rapes last year in Mumbai, including an attack on a photojournalist that sparked protests and raised fresh questions about attitudes to women in the world’s largest democracy.
A Mumbai court on Friday sentenced Vijay Jadhav, Kasim Bengali and Mohammed Salim Ansari to death.
“This is the first case in India in which the death penalty has been given to convicts while the victim is alive,” special prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam told reporters outside the court. “There was no chance of reformation in these men.”
Judge Shalini Phansalkar-Joshi said that the offence was diabolical in nature and that this would send a strong message to society.
http://www.france24.com/en/20140404-india-death-penalty-gang-rapes-mumbai/
Concord cop accused of swiping drugs from the elderly
A Concord police K-9 officer surrendered Friday and will resign after being charged with stealing prescription drugs from senior citizens.
Matthew Switzer, a 12-year department veteran, appeared in Contra Costa County Superior Court in Martinez on Friday afternoon but did not enter a plea to two counts of first-degree burglary and one count each of second-degree burglary, fraudulently obtaining prescription drugs and elder abuse.*
Switzer, 38, who is on paid administrative leave, is being held in lieu of $480,000 bail.
Switzer's attorney Harry Stern said his client had been prescribed Norco, a narcotic pain reliever, for an on-duty neck injury "that caused a great deal of pain. He was trying to keep working. They prescribed him drugs, they continued to prescribe him and he got hooked. And once you're hooked, that's a real hard one to beat. It's heroin by any other name."
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Concord-cop-accused-of-swiping-drugs-from-the-5377212.php
Profile Information
Name: Jesus MalverdeGender: Male
Hometown: SF
Current location: Japan
Member since: Fri May 17, 2013, 11:44 PM
Number of posts: 10,274
