Saturday, February 26th, 2011
NICK BAUMANN and DANIEL SCHULMAN, - Mother Jones
Stephan: If you think the South Dakota proposal to make it legal to kill people who gave women reproductive health services was an aberration, well, think again. There is a vileness to this, a toxic fanaticism that cannot be overstated.
Just when abortion rights supporters thought they had beaten a controversial bill they believe would legalize the killing of abortion providers, it has cropped up again-this time in a more expansive form that has drawn the concern of law enforcement officials.
Last week, South Dakota’s legislature shelved a bill, introduced by Republican state Rep. Phil Jensen, which would have allowed the use of the ‘justifiable homicide’ defense for killings intended to prevent harm to a fetus. Now a nearly identical bill is being considered in neighboring Nebraska, where on Wednesday the state legislature held a hearing on the measure.
The legislation, LB 232, was introduced by state Sen. Mark Christensen, a devout Christian and die-hard abortion foe who is opposed to the procedure even in the case of rape. Unlike its South Dakota counterpart, which would have allowed only a pregnant woman, her husband, her parents, or her children to commit ‘justifiable homicide’ in defense of her fetus, the Nebraska bill would apply to any third party.
‘In short, this bill authorizes and protects vigilantes, and that’s something that’s unprecedented in our society,’ Melissa Grant of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland told the Nebraska legislature’s judiciary committee on Wednesday. Specifically, she warned, it […]
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Saturday, February 26th, 2011
JEANNA BRYNER, Managing Editor - LiveScience
Stephan: Here is an interesting little trend, showing how larger cultural values are reflected even in small very personal things.
Babies born in newer U.S. states have more distinctive names compared with their counterparts in older regions such as New England, a new study finds.
It turns out, the same values that pushed adventurous individuals into new territories as our country was being populated may still show up in the names their descendants give to babies, a new study finds.
In more recently established states, such as Washington and Oregon, parents tend to choose less common baby names1, while parents in ‘older’ areas, such as the original 13 states, go for more popular names.
Frontiers typically have fewer established institutions or infrastructure, and often occupy harsh environments. Early pioneers couldn’t rely on others for help in such sparsely populated areas.
These factors ‘select for people who are high in individualism and foster and reward individualistic values such as uniqueness and self-reliance,’ said lead researcher Michael Varnum of the University of Michigan. ‘This leads to regional cultures which perpetuate these values, which in turn shape behavioral practices, such as baby naming.’ [Most Popular Baby Names in History2]
Psychologist Jean Twenge of San Diego State University, who studies baby naming, applauds Varnum’s study on frontiers and unique baby names3, which is detailed in the February 2011 […]
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Saturday, February 26th, 2011
, - Agence France-Presse (France)
Stephan: Proof, if more were needed, of how we have squandered billions, in the process giving a few war profiteers like Halliburton obscene profits, even as we are cutting back food programs for children.
WASHINGTON — Corruption and waste has cost the US government billions of reconstruction dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an official study on wartime contracting released on Thursday.
The report found that ‘criminal behavior and blatant corruption’ were responsible for much of the waste related to the nearly $200 billion spent since 2002 on US reconstruction and other projects in the two countries.
It did not give exact figures, but cited the Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction report to Congress in January that found efforts were at clear risk because of poor planning and insufficient oversight.
Another estimate in the ‘Commission on Wartime Contracting’ report found that losses to fraud alone in both war zones could be as high as $12 billion.
‘When it comes to oversight of contingency contracting, we’ve been driving beyond the reach of our headlights. Reforms are badly needed,’ said the report.
‘For many years, the government has abdicated its contracting responsibilities — too often using contractors as the default mechanism — without consideration for the resources needed to manage them.’
The commission offers 32 recommendations to improve the situation in both Iraq and Afghanistan, where some 200,000 people are employed by subcontractors, including a decrease in dependence on private security […]
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Saturday, February 26th, 2011
Stephan: This may seem a very esoteric issue from our cultural view. But Asia sees it differently, and this has large consequences. The death of the current Dali Lama will change the game utterly and the Chinese, thanks to thousands of years of culture, can commit to and carry out a long game. Note particularly the statute outlawing the Dali Lama's reincarnation outside of China.
Thanks to Jim Baraff.
It’s probably best not to even try making sense of Beijing’s pronouncements on the 14th Dalai Lama and other Tibetan spiritual leaders: you’ll only make your head hurt. Last week the officially atheist Chinese government’s State Administration for Religious Affairs disclosed plans to enact a new law forbidding the 75-year-old Buddhist deity to be reborn anywhere but on Chinese-controlled soil, and giving final say to Chinese authorities when the time comes to identify his 15th incarnation.
That might seem to pose a dilemma, given the exiled leader’s earlier promise that he will never again be reincarnated in Tibet as long as his homeland remains under China’s heel. Still, no one seems too concerned just now about the Dalai Lama’s next life. Instead, attention has focused on an all-too-worldly fracas over the finances of the 25-year-old Tibetan-born holy man who seems most likely to assume leadership of the exile community after the current Dalai Lama’s death: the 17th Karmapa Lama.
It began in late January when a random police check found a car in northern India hauling roughly $200,000 in Indian currency. Investigators followed the trail to the Karmapa’s monastery in the Indian town of Dharamsala, where they confiscated trunkloads of cash, reportedly […]
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Friday, February 25th, 2011
MICHAEL HASTINGS, - RollingStone
Stephan: This is an inevitable result of living in a state of permanent war. Generals are like any other special interest group, they want as big a piece of the public pie as they can get, and use whatever means suggest themselves -- just like the Koch brothers. Eisenhower warned us this would happen. What I find heartening is that the soldiers themselves resisted.
The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in ‘psychological operations’ to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.
The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as ‘information operations’ at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation.
‘My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave,’ says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. ‘I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on […]
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