CANDICE BERND, - Truthout
Stephan: The growth of the American police state, as this report spells out, continues to grow.
The intricate surveillance equipment used by the federal government to track and store the cellphone data of millions of people and to monitor terrorism suspects is making its way to Main Street.
Police departments across the nation have been trying to conceal their use of cellphone tracking equipment from local courts because of nondisclosure agreements that allow the departments to use the devices on loan – as long as they promise the manufacturer they will keep it a secret.
The devices, manufactured by the Florida-based Harris Corporation, are commonly used at the federal level, but are also proliferating across local and state police departments. The technology has been purchased under various names, including StingRay, HailStorm, Harpoon, AmberJack, KingFish and RayFish, and mimics a cellphone tower.
When cellphones connect to the device, it can record the phone’s unique information and traffic data, as well as its location. The devices can triangulate the position of a particular cellphone in relation to its antenna and other towers in the area with greater accuracy than would be possible from a network provider’s permanent tower location.
The devices are used to gather information about both specific individuals and large groups (including people involved in political dissent). They also sweep […]
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DAVID ROSE, - The Daily Mail (U.K.)
Stephan: Pull away the curtain and this is what the fight over climate change looks like. The takeaway: government reports can no longer be trusted. The Virtual Corporate States that are now the real world powers simply are using their government servants to craft the message they want. One that will protect their short term profits. Science must be made to serve their interests, or face being censored.
A top US academic has dramatically revealed how government officials forced him to change a hugely influential scientific report on climate change to suit their own interests.
Harvard professor Robert Stavins electrified the worldwide debate on climate change on Friday by sensationally publishing a letter online in which he spelled out the astonishing interference.
He said the officials, representing “all the main countries and regions of the world’ insisted on the changes in a late-night meeting at a Berlin conference centre two weeks ago.
Three quarters of the original version of the document ended up being deleted.
Prof Stavins claimed the intervention amounted to a serious “conflict of interest’ between scientists and governments. His revelation is significant because it is rare for climate change experts to publicly question the process behind the compilation of reports on the subject.
Prof Stavins, Harvard’s Professor of Business and Government, was one of two “co-ordinating lead authors’ of a key report published by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) earlier this month.
His chapter of the 2,000-page original report concerned ways countries can co-operate to reduce carbon emissions.
IPCC reports are supposed to be scrupulously independent as they give scientific advice to governments around the world to help […]
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TARA CULP-RESSLER, - Think Progress
Stephan: Here is yet further information about the Inequity Trend. What this report doesn't really mention is that while the rich in either Red or Blue value states live about the same number of years, the middle class (what is left of them) and the poor in Red value states live significantly shorter lives than those in Blue value states. Just for starters tens of thousands die needlessly because Red value governors have not expanded Medicaid. And yet the people of those Red value states will reliably vote against their own self-interest in both 2014 and 2016.
Click through to see the charts.
Although life expectancy has been rising for Americans as a whole, the people who live in this country aren’t necessary sharing those gains equally. Wealthy people are enjoying longer lifespans than lower income Americans, according to a new analysis from Brookings Institute researchers, and the gap is threatening to get wider.
By the age of 55 years old, the average American man in the richest 10 percent of the county can expect to live another 35 years. But the average man in the poorest 10 percent only has about 24 years left. And the discrepancy is even starker among women, since low-income women’s life expectancy has actually been declining:
man life expectancy
‘Life expectancy is rising for those at the top of the distribution of individuals ranked by alternative measures of socio-economic status, but it is stagnate or declining for those at the bottom,” the researchers conclude.
It’s not entirely surprising that poverty is an indicator of a shorter life span. Economic insecurity has a long list of negative effects on physical and mental health. People living in poverty are less likely to have access to quality food and clean air, and they’re more likely to struggle to afford the medical care they […]
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Saturday, April 26th, 2014
Stephan: I am in the hospital -- leaving tomorrow -- and I apologize for not getting out Friday's edition.
-- Stephan
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Saturday, April 26th, 2014
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES, - ProPublica
Stephan: My social consciousness began when I was nine and got a glass of water for a Black boy who was my age, and took form from my involvement in the Civil Rights movement in the 50s and 60s. As I sit here in Providence Hospital, and look back across the years, and consider the news on the television as I am writing, I wonder what we achieved. It is hard to root out hate from the human heart.
Though James Dent could watch Central High School’s homecoming parade from the porch of his faded-white bungalow, it had been years since he’d bothered. But last fall, Dent’s oldest granddaughter, D’Leisha, was vying for homecoming queen, and he knew she’d be poking up through the sunroof of her mother’s car, hand cupped in a beauty-pageant wave, looking for him.
So, at about 4:30 in the afternoon on October 18, Dent, age 64, made his way off the porch and to the curb along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in the West End of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Soon he could hear the first rumblings of the band.
There was a time, little more than a decade ago, when the Central High School homecoming parade brought out the city. The parade started in the former state capital’s lively downtown and seemed to go on for miles. The horns of one of the state’s largest marching bands, some 150 members strong, would bounce off the antebellum mansions along the streets. Revelers-young and old, black and white, old money and no money-crowded the sidewalks to watch the elaborate floats and cheer a football team feared across the region.
Central was not just a renowned local high school. It […]
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