Tuesday, November 26th, 2013
MICHAEL KIMMEL, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: Increasingly I see an existential trend arising in the U.S.. Its source, I think, is the growing realization on the part of Whites, particularly White males who themselves are not successful, that even the birthright status previously accorded Whites, for just being White, is ending as the U.S. becomes a country with no racial majority. With their over-active Amygdalas and their Theocratic Rightist worldview these men are dangerous, and a toxic force in society.
The following is an excerpt fromAngry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era, by Michael Kimmel (Nation Books, 2013).
Who are the white supremacists? There has been no formal survey, for obvious reasons, but there are several noticeable patterns. Geographically, they come from America’s heartland-small towns, rural cities, swelling suburban sprawl outside larger Sunbelt cities. These aren’t the prosperous towns, but the single-story working-class exurbs that stretch for what feels like forever in the corridor between Long Beach and San Diego (not the San Fernando Valley), or along the southern tier of Pennsylvania, or spread all through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, across the vast high plains of eastern Washington and Oregon, through Idaho and Montana. There are plenty in the declining cities of the Rust Belt, in Dearborn and Flint, Buffalo and Milwaukee, in the bars that remain in the shadows of the hulking deserted factories that once were America’s manufacturing centers. And that doesn’t even touch the former states of the Confederacy, where flying the Confederate flag is a culturally approved symbol of ‘southern pride
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Tuesday, November 26th, 2013
BRYCE COVERT, - Think Progress
Stephan: America's homeless situation is a human disaster, and I think it is our lack of shame about this that is particularly disturbing. Something has gone seriously awry in the American psyché that makes this o.k. for a large percentage of our population.
More than 600,000 Americans are homeless on a given night, according to the latest government data, which conducts a count on a specific night in January every year. Nearly a quarter are children and a third were living in unsheltered places like parks, cars, or abandoned buildings.
The number of people who are chronically homeless, or who have been continuously homeless for more than one year or experienced at least four episodes over the last three, is over 100,000, and two-thirds go unsheltered. There were more than 57,000 homeless veterans.
The good news is that the government says the numbers have been declining overall. Homelessness declined by 4 percent compared to last year and by 9 percent since the beginning of the recession in 2007. Chronic homelessness has dropped by 25 percent since 2007 and homelessness among veterans went down by 24 percent.
But they aren’t declining everywhere, and some states actually saw huge increases. Five states - California, Florida, Massachusetts, New York, and Texas - account for more than half of the country’s homeless population, and of those three saw some of the largest upticks. Homelessness rose by 11.3 percent in New York, by 8.7 percent in Massachusetts, and by 4.5 percent […]
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Tuesday, November 26th, 2013
TIMOTHY EGAN, Contributing Op-Ed Writer - The New York Times
Stephan: Here, once again, we see what the worldview of the Theocratic Right, which dominates much of the South, achieves. Not a pretty picture.
Before he was immortalized for saving the union, freeing the slaves and giving the best political speech in American history, Abraham Lincoln was just an unpopular new president handed a colossal crisis. Elected with 39.7 percent of the vote, Lincoln told a big lie in his inaugural address of 1861.
‘I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists,
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Monday, November 25th, 2013
BRIAN BIENKOWSKI, - Scientific American
Stephan: Here is a major reason why we are facing the crisis of superbugs; the other being the grotesque over-use of pharmaceuticals in industrial animal husbandry. As with climate change it is greed of the few pitted against the wellness of the many. The misuse of our own technologies is destroying our world.
This problem exists because of thousands upon thousands of little thoughtless decisions. Never, ever, flush drugs down the toilet.
Only about half of the prescription drugs and other newly emerging contaminants in sewage are removed by treatment plants.
That’s the finding of a new report by the International Joint Commission, a consortium of officials from the United States and Canada who study the Great Lakes.
The impact of most of these ‘chemicals of emerging concern
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Monday, November 25th, 2013
SAM PIZZIGATI, Associate Fellow - Institute for Policy Studies - Moyers & Company
Stephan: Here is an interesting idea, which I also take as the beginning of a trend -- not necessarily this approach but the idea of leveling inequity in general.
Something astounding is happening in Switzerland. For the first time ever, voters in a modern developed nation are going to be voting on whether to create what amounts to a ‘maximum wage.
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