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Coilhouse Magazine is a love letter to alternative culture, written in an era when alternative culture no longer exists. And because it no longer exists, we take from yesterday and tomorrow, from the mainstream and from the underground, to construct our own version. Coilhouse covers art, fashion, technology, literature, music and film to create an alternative culture that we would like to live in, as opposed to the one that’s being sold or handed down to us. If our Utopia is your Utopia, then welcome!
Coilhouse Issue 3 is out now and available at http://www.coilhouse.net as well as select book stores nationwide.
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BRING BACK THE BAD GUYS
Jeff Huber
Conquerors immemorial have known that the secret to successful occupations is to let the guys who surrender stay in charge of the yokels. We are presently bogged down in two quagmires because we haven’t learned that lesson.
Iraq’s government and security forces are incompetent and corrupt, the Kurdish situation remains unresolved, and nobody seems confident that the country will ever be able to function as an independent state again. Oh, for the good old days under Saddam Hussein! Whatever you want to say about the son of a sand dune, he didn’t need a field manual to figure out how to run his country. Neither did Mohammed Omar’s Taliban need a book on how to run Afghanistan. They have lived in the neighborhood for a very long time.
Decapitating regimes through military force is the most foolhardy of foreign-policy acts. The Prussians discovered this the hard way in the Franco- Prussian War. They defeated the French Army at Sedan and took Napoleon III prisoner along with 140,000 of his soldiers. But the war dragged on for months because the French formed a new government and a new army and kept fighting. They didn’t like the idea of Germans occupying their country. Imagine that.
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WHERE IS THE CRISIS HEADING?
http://www.washprofile.org/en/node/8155
Sebastien Gay, Professor of Economics at University of Chicago.
Question: What is your comment on the recent economic crisis?
Gay: It is devastating. People are scared about losing their jobs, their homes, their retirement, and their college savings funds. It is a very stressful time. I think we are seeing an example of unregulated traders manipulating the market system where people bought and sold bad credits without looking to see what it really was.
Question: An ordinary person might think or question – could that be an eventual or ultimate end of capitalism?
Gay: It is a very good question. I don’t think this is the end of capitalism per se. What we see here is how people manipulated the capitalistic system in such a way that it would be bound to fail. Although it has had terrible consequences for consumers we are seeing a weeding out of those companies that made these bad decisions (barring the bailout). The bailout was a decision to get capitalism back on its feet, or at least an attempt to do it.
Question: So it is rather a mismanagement of the system but not the system itself.
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AMERICAN JURIES
By Fred Graham
The U.S. jury system derived from a British practice that aimed to protect subjects from tyranny by the king. For hundreds of years, the system has evolved with changes in society and has survived, still presenting a check on government power. Fred Graham is an anchor on truTV, formerly called Court TV, and was the primary court reporter for CBS News from 1972 to 1987. This article appears in the July 2009 issue of eJournal USA, Anatomy of a Jury Trial.
In the winter of 2009, inmates of Roumieh prison in Lebanon were given permission to stage a play. They chose to perform an Arabic version of 12 Angry Men, originally an American television drama and then a hit 1957 movie, about jurors who argue bitterly over a murder case and eventually find the defendant not guilty.
The version put on by the prisoners was a smash success — despite the fact that Lebanon, like most nations, has no trial by jury and all of the imprisoned viewers had been locked up without the benefit of the kind of anguished deliberations that are the essence of a jury trial. In fact, 90 percent of the world’s jury trials take place in the United States, where the practice is thriving.
What makes the American jury system so fascinating to the public? Why does it flourish in the United States and barely exist elsewhere? Does the U.S. system carry the seeds of its own demise, as in other nations that once used juries widely and gradually replaced them with decisions by judges?
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THE END OF CAPITALISM? MARK TWAIN, LAKE WOBEGON, CURRENT CRISIS
By Mark Blyth
While the type of financial crisis we face today is unprecedented, crises of capitalism are not. They are commonplace.
Mark Blyth is a professor of international political economy at Brown University. He is the author of Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Political Change in the Twentieth Century.
If you draw what statisticians call a time series of the returns to the U.S. banking sector from 1947 to 2008, it is possible to talk with some confidence about the average rate of profitability of the sector over time, the peaks (1990s to mid-2000s), the troughs (1947 to 1967), and the sharp growth of the sector’s profitability over the past 10 years. If you then add in the data for the period between August 2008 and April 2009, the entire series, like the banking system it describes, simply blows up. Averages, means, variances, and the like dissolve, so extreme have been recent events. Indeed, when the former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, Alan Greenspan, admits that his understanding of market processes was deeply flawed, and when the current chairman, Ben Bernanke, says that we face the greatest crisis since the Great Depression, we should probably take it seriously.
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A CHECKLIST FOR NEW PRESIDENTS
by Stephen Hess
One can think of an incoming president’s tasks as “The Three Ps”: Personnel, Process, Policy. He must review the policy commitments he made during the campaign. In what order should he try to honor them? Some will take time. But because President Franklin Roosevelt created a remarkable record in his first hundred days, all presidents know that “100 days” is a marker the media will use to judge them.
Stephen Hess is Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Brookings Institution and Distinguished Research Professor of Media and Public Affairs at the George Washington University. His most recent book is What Do We Do Now? A Workbook for the President-Elect.
Presidential elections in the United States take place every fourth year on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November -- November 4 in 2008 -- with the winner taking office, as it is written in the Constitution, “at noon on the 20th day of January.” This gap between election and inauguration is a uniquely American phenomenon. If there is to be a new president, it is a period of great interest around the world. It is also a period with a history of confusion and even, on occasion, dire policy consequences. This does not happen in parliamentary systems, where there is instant governmental turnover.
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THE WEST MUST SET A STRATEGY FOR A RESURGENT RUSSIA
By Anatol Lieven
Every few months or even weeks, a new issue seems to arise to create new hostility to Russia in the US, and often Europe too. Sometimes this is based on real conflicts of views or interests; as for example the question of Russian and West European ownership of parts of each other’s energy networks. Often, however, the issues are essentially minor, and of no real significance to important Western interests.
And in the great majority of cases, alas, reporting and comment by much of the Western media, and statements by Western politicians, reflect a frightening degree of bias and ignorance – when not outright disinformation; a situation worsened by the tendency to select Russian commentators in US newspapers only from one narrow section of Russian liberal opinion.
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THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF FAITH
By Brian J. Grim and David Masci
Scores of different religious groups coexist in the United States, all enjoying the right to follow their faiths with the legal protection of the U.S. Constitution.
Brian J. Grim, senior research fellow in religion and world affairs, and David Masci, senior research fellow in religion and law, are with the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. The Forum is a project of the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan organization in Washington, D.C., which provides information on issues, attitudes, and trends shaping the United States and the world.
The United States is one of the most religiously diverse countries in the world. Indeed, with adherents from all of the world’s major religions, the United States is truly a nation of religious minorities. Although Protestantism remains the dominant strain of Christianity in the United States, the Protestant tradition is divided into dozens of major denominations, all with unique beliefs, religious practices, and histories. Furthermore, Protestant Christianity’s dominance in the United States has waned in recent years.
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ABM SYSTEM IN EASTERN EUROPE HAS LITTLE TO DO WITH SECURITY AND EVERYTHING TO DO WITH SPIN
Andrew MORAVCSIK, director of the European Union Program at Princeton University
Politics stops at the water's edge. Or so voters in the Western democracies like to believe. When our security is at stake, we expect elected leaders to think coolly and strategically, advancing the national interest.
Iraq has done much to discredit such hopes. Now comes another American-inspired folly—the brewing transatlantic spat over the deployment of a primitive antiballistic-missile defense system in Eastern Europe. At bottom, it has little to do with security, and everything to do with symbolism and spin. And in the end it is destined to come back to bite its adherents in their collective geostrategic backside.
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DOES RUSSIA HAVE OR NEED ALLIES?
Ann ODEGOVA, graduate student of journalism of the Moscow State University and of the American University in Moscow
It is not a secret now that today relations of Russia with different countries which could be our faithful allies are becoming less cloudless. This year it became especially obvious. But is it necessary to burn bridges? Flexibility is necessary in these relations.
Is it correct to translate all relations on a monetary basis? It was with Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan. Recent New Year's conflict with Byelorussia (White Russia) once again roughly naked essence of the future changes.
We do not have allies. Love for money has remained. Oh, pity calculation! Everything is seized by it. We should only recognize its domination which has aggravated political situation.
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EXPERT OPINION: ARE WE ENTERING A NEW COLD WAR?
Gary Hamburg, Professor of European History at Claremont McKenna College, and Johannes F. Linn, Executive Director of the Wolfensohn Center for Development at the Brookings Institution analyze the current state of U.S.-Russian relations.
— How would you characterize the current U.S.- Russian relationship: are we in fact heading towards a new cold war?
GARY HAMBURG, Professor of European History at Claremont McKenna College, author of several books on Russia and the Soviet Union: U.S.-Russian relations have become difficult for various reasons:
Putin thinks the United States has become a force for instability in the world, by which he means that the U.S. intervention in Iraq has destabilized the Middle East but also that U.S. sponsorship of NATO expansion has disturbed Russia's 'near abroad'; Putin also thinks that the United States has not duly recognized Russian power, political and economic; the Bush administration is disappointed by what it sees as Putin's meddling in Ukrainian internal affairs, by its unhelpful attitude toward Georgia, by its use of oil as an instrument of political intimidation in Europe, and, of course, by the continuing Russian use of force in Chechnya (which reminds Washington of Soviet habits, even though the tacit agreement is for Washington to 'look the other way' while Chechnya is pacified and to classify the suppression of Chechen independence as a part of the international 'war on terror.')
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Georgia’s New Geopolitical Patron
Sergey Markedonov, Ph.D., is the head of the Interethnic Relations Department at Moscow’s Institute of Political and Military Analysis.
Special to Russia Profile
The United States and Georgia Sign a Strategic Partnership Agreement
Contrary to the Americans’ desire, Georgia recently failed to secure a Membership Action Plan in NATO. But this doesn’t mean that the United States has abandoned its policy of spreading democracy in the Southern Caucasus region. On the contrary, some historic examples demonstrate that the country is willing and ready to form cooperative relationships with non-NATO member states whenever its interests so demand.
For the Southern Caucasus region, the new (political and calendar) year started with the signing of the Charter on Strategic Partnership between the United States and Georgia. The six-page-long document was signed by the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on behalf of the United States, and by the Foreign Affairs Minister Grigol Vashadze on the part of Georgia.
In the grand scheme of things, the appearance of such a document was not a sensation. It is no secret that by now, Washington has been patronizing Tbilisi for a few years. Georgia (just like other countries of the Southern Caucasus) is a part of America’s ambitious geopolitical project titled “The Greater Middle East.” A special role in it has been assigned to Georgia, for a number of reasons.
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BRIDGESTONE AMERICAS, INC.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Susan Sizemore
615-584-3190
877-201-2373
Bridgestone Americas Announces Launch of Third Annual
Safety Scholars Video Contest at Chicago Auto Show
Popular teen program integral part of company’s driver safety education initiatives;
2009 contest includes new environmental component
CHICAGO (Feb. 11, 2009) – Bridgestone Americas announced at the 2009 Chicago Auto Show that, as part of its ongoing commitment to automotive safety education and due to the incredible popularity and success of the program, it is launching its third annual Safety Scholars Video Contest.
Targeted to young drivers ages 16-21, Safety Scholars is a contest in which entrants create short auto safety-themed videos. This year, another topic – automotive environmentalism – has been made available to entrants, extending the message of the Bridgestone Group’s “One Team, One Planet” global environmental initiative.
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Introduction
THE SNOW QUEEN
www.snowqueen.us
Anderson House Foundation is proud to present one of the best fairy tales of all time, The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen.
This collectible children's book, richly illustrated by award winning Ukrainian artist Vladyslav Yerko, also well known for his illustrations of the Harry Potter books, is a unique Holiday gift for children of all ages.
AHF has exclusive rights to distribute
a special art edition of this children's bestseller across the US and Canada.
The quantity is limited.
All collected funds are used for AHF charitable projects.
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