Wednesday, September 25th, 2013
Stephan: This is part of the New American Slavery trend. This is what happens when a public function like law enforcement and imprisonment are privatized and turned into a profit making activity. Part of this is also to put the prisoners to work, for pennies per hour. What a deal. You have people completely under your control. It's even better than the old slavery, because they can't run away, and public monies pay for the upkeep of the slaves. There are now more New Slaves than old slaves in the pre-Civil War South. We have 2.7 million people in prison bondage, most of them Black and Brown. It is the world's largest gulag. We have five per cent of the world's population, and 25 percent of the world's prisoners. That's the reality of American Exceptionalism.
Imagine living in a country where prisons are private corporations that profit from keeping their beds stocked at, or near, capacity and the governing officials scramble to meet contractual ‘lockup quotas.
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Wednesday, September 25th, 2013
JEFF WISE, - Popular Mechanics
Stephan: Here is a fascinating cosmological report. Something that renders human activities as minor events.
Nothing is as tranquil as the expanse of the Milky Way floating in the summer night sky-or so you’d think. In reality, the center of our galaxy is a chaos of fast-whirling stars, super novae debris, and intensely magnetic neutron stars, all orbiting around a monster black hole 4 million times the mass of the sun.
And things are going to get even more violent. Astronomers have detected a blob of gas, called G2, that’s being ripped apart as it plunges toward the black hole. Later this year the hole will start to consume that cloud of gas. As the gas accelerates to terrific speeds, it collides with other incoming matter, heats up, and radiates energy at a ferocious rate. A similar flare-up 100 years ago created a burst of light as bright as a million suns; we know because the light echoes are still bouncing around the center of the galaxy. According to radio astronomer Shep Doeleman, the upcoming annihilation event could last for a year or more and rank as ‘a once-in-a-lifetime event.’
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Tuesday, September 24th, 2013
GEORGE CHIDI, - The Raw Story
Stephan: I confess this trend about taking food away from poor people upsets me more than almost anything else. I consider the Theocratic Right Republican position on food assistance to be essentially evil. It is a kind of crime against humanity. But one has to face the truth that people like Representative Kevin Cramer (R-ND) are in office because American voters put them there. So the shame lies with the people of North Dakota.
A Facebook question from a Bismark, North Dakota resident to his congressman started off rockily yesterday, when the congressman dismissed a religious argument opposed to cuts in the federal food stamp program with a religious quote.
‘2 Thessalonians 3:10 English Standard Version (ESV) 10 For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat,
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Tuesday, September 24th, 2013
Susan Hagen, - University of Rochester
Stephan: The nasty truth about the enduring racism in the South is something few want to talk about. Almost nothing serious appears in the corporate media. I knew it and worked against it as a youth in Virginia, and continue to be surprised at how fundamental it still is to Southern whites. It is notable that almost all of these Southern racists are Republicans
Please click through to see the very useful charts.
Although slavery was abolished 150 years ago, its political legacy is alive and well, according to researchers who performed a new county-by-county analysis of census data and opinion polls of more than 39,000 southern whites.
The team of political scientists found that white Southerners who live today in the Cotton Belt where slavery and the plantation economy dominated are much more likely to express more negative attitudes toward blacks than their fellow Southerners who live in nearby areas that had few slaves. Residents of these former slavery strongholds are also more likely to identify as Republican and to express opposition to race-related policies such as affirmative action.
Slaves were concentrated in counties where cotton thrived, as shown in the above map based on the 1860 census. White Southerners in these same areas today express more racial resentment and are more likely to be Republican and oppose affirmative action, than other Southerners.
Conducted by Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell, and Maya Sen from the University of Rochester, the research is believed to be the first to demonstrate quantitatively the lasting effects of slavery on contemporary political attitudes in the American South. The findings hold even when other dynamics often associated with racial animosity are factored […]
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Tuesday, September 24th, 2013
SUZANNE GOLDENBERG, US Environment Correspondent - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: The anti-science posture of the Theocratic Right is, at this point, evil. I know no other word that is appropriate. And the lengths to which the Right pursues its anti-science agenda is appalling, as this report makes clear.
It seemed entirely harmless: the creation of an honorary and unpaid position of science laureate of the United States to travel around the country and inspire children to be future scientists.
But Republicans in Congress last week quashed the initiative, which had gained rare bipartisan support, on the grounds that a science laureate might support action on climate change.
The bill had been scheduled for swift approval last week. It would have allowed Barack Obama to name up to three laureates at a time to the two-year term. The posts would all be unpaid, and appointees credentials would be vetted by the National Academy of Sciences.
But after urging from the American Conservative Union, which bills itself as the country’s largest and oldest grassroots conservative organisation, Republicans in the House leadership pulled the science laureate bill off the schedule, and sent it for revision.
In a letter to members of Congress, Larry Hart, a former Republican congressional aide and the legislative director of the ACU, warned a science laureate might give Barack Obama another chance to advance the case for climate action.
‘Although the bill seems innocuous, it will provide the opportunity for President Obama to make an appointment of someone (or more than one […]
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