Wednesday, June 13th, 2012
Stephan: The Theocratic Right always pushes the stereotypes about women who want equal pay for equal work, broad reproductive health for women, and gender equality as social policy. They portray these women as cold angry individuals who have lost touch with their womanhood. Like so many things asserted by the Theocratic Right it is fact free hate speech, as this report makes clear.
A New York Times debate bluntly titled ‘Motherhood vs. Feminism’ in April was just the latest of many attempts to cast today’s movement toward baby slings, family beds, and years of breastfeeding as the antithesis of feminist principles. And Time’s now-infamous breastfeeding-toddler cover ignited the argument yet again. By talking to hundreds of mothers, though, psychologists Miriam Liss and Mindy J. Erchull show it’s not that simple. They found that feminist moms were actually more likely to support attachment-parenting techniques than non-feminist moms, but that stereotypes about motherhood and feminism still persist.
In a study published in the journal Sex Roles, Liss and Erchull asked 222 self-identified feminists and 209 non-feminists to rate, on a scale of 1 to 6, how much they agreed with statements like ‘Parents should carry their children as often as possible’ (a key principle of attachment parenting is the recommendation that parents carry children close to the body in a sling as much as possible while doing daily tasks, eschewing strollers and sometimes even carseats) and ‘It is important to co-sleep with your child.’ They found that feminist moms agreed with the attachment-parenting tenets the most:
They also asked women how long mothers should ideally breastfeed (on […]
No Comments
Wednesday, June 13th, 2012
STEPHEN C. WEBSTER, - The Raw Story
Stephan: Remember the Republican bill in North Carolina that seeks to make it illegal to use science to plan for climate change? Think that was a unique act of stupidity? Think again? Here's a Republican regulation in Virginia that is equally weird and stupid.
These acts, in my view, represent crimes against humanity. But I have no illusions anything will be done about them; just as nothing is going to be done about climate change. We need to prepare for the worst.
Virginia House Delegate Christopher Stolle (R) might be on the right-wing fringe when it comes to climate science, but at least he’s helping fellow lawmakers temper the tea party’s reaction to costly government studies on the matter.
In a legislative dust-up earlier this year, according to reporter Scott Harper, writing for The Virginian-Pilot, Stolle told Virginia State Senator Ralph Northam (D) that the terms ‘climate change
No Comments
Wednesday, June 13th, 2012
JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ, Nobel Laureate Economist - W.W. Norton & Company
Stephan: Here is the bitter truth. It is time to acknowledge that the Republican Party has been pursuing with utter cynicism a conscious policy of crashing the country's economy in order to limit Obama to one term.
What happened to America, land of opportunity? In his new book, which hit the shelves yesterday, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz takes up that burning question. Taking a long, hard look at the global specter of inequality, Stiglitz describes what causes it, why the trend endangers our future and what to do about it. Stiglitz begins by describing the broader failures of our economic system and how these failures have led to a widespread sense of unfairness and reduced opportunity for most of us. [Reprinted from The Price of Inequality by Joseph Stiglitz. Copyright © 2012 by Joseph Stiglitz. With the permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.]
The Failure of Markets
arkets have clearly not been working in the way that their boosters claim. Markets are supposed to be stable, but the global financial crisis showed that they could be very unstable, with devastating consequences. The bankers had taken bets that, without government assistance, would have brought them and the entire economy down. But a closer look at the system showed that this was not an accident; the bankers had incentives to behave this way.
The virtue of the market is supposed to be its efficiency. But the market obviously […]
No Comments
Stephan: The corporate media either doesn't understand the bee problem, doesn't care, or doesn't want to offend a corporate master. But the earth cares a lot about bees, and so should you, since your ability to eat is closely correlated with their health. If you use pesticides in your garden, or on your lawn, you are part of the problem. Stop it.
Source: 'In Situ Replication of Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder,' Chensheng Lu, Kenneth M. Warchol, Richard A. Callahan, Bulletin of Insectology, June 2012
The likely culprit in sharp worldwide declines in honeybee colonies since 2006 is imidacloprid, one of the most widely used pesticides, according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH).
The authors, led by Alex Lu, associate professor of environmental exposure biology in the Department of Environmental Health, write that the new research provides ‘convincing evidence’ of the link between imidacloprid and the phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), in which adult bees abandon their hives.
The study will appear in the June issue of the Bulletin of Insectology.
‘The significance of bees to agriculture cannot be underestimated,’ says Lu. ‘And it apparently doesn’t take much of the pesticide to affect the bees. Our experiment included pesticide amounts below what is normally present in the environment.’
Pinpointing the cause of the problem is crucial because bees — beyond producing honey — are prime pollinators of roughly one-third of the crop species in the U.S., including fruits, vegetables, nuts, and livestock feed such as alfalfa and clover. Massive loss of honeybees could result in billions of dollars in agricultural losses, experts estimate.
Lu and his co-authors hypothesized that the uptick in CCD resulted from the presence of imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid introduced in […]
No Comments
DAVE MURPHY, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: This is another failure of the Obama Administration to honestly address a problem because they fear to offend a major corporate interest. Essentially choosing a corporate master over social wellness and the stated desire of the citizenry.
This is why so many people who voted for him the first time feel betrayed and, if there were a real option would not vote for him again. But will have to because however disappointing Obama is Romney is a disaster in waiting.
Dave Murphy is the founder of Food Democracy Now!
Popular resistance is boiling over on the GMO labeling issue, as the New York Times reported recently in a front page story.
More than a million people have asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for mandatory labeling of genetically engineered food on a legal petition in March and on May 2nd, nearly a million voter signatures were submitted in California to place a GMO labeling initiative on ballot in November. Clearly, Americans believe strongly in their right to know what’s in their food. Ninety percent of US voters want this type of labeling. Yet we still don’t have it. Why?
Twenty years ago this week, then-Vice President Dan Quayle announced the FDA’s policy on genetically engineered food as part of his ‘regulatory relief initiative.’ The policy, Quayle explained, was based on the idea that genetic engineering is no different than traditional plant breeding, and therefore required no new regulations.
Five years earlier, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush visited a Monsanto lab for a photo op with the developers of Roundup Ready crops. According to a video report of the meeting, when Monsanto executives worried about the approval process for their new crops, Bush laughed and told them, ‘Call me. We’re in […]
No Comments
