Brenda M. Seaver, National Security Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars - The National Interest
Stephan: As this report spells out, "By 2030, Asia-Pacific countries will comprise nearly
two-thirds of the global middle class, dwarfing the projected one-fifth for Europe and North America combined."
Along with climate change this is one of the great geopolitical meta-trends that will define the 21st century. In the U.S., one has to also add The Emerging White Minority Trend.
And yet you will find barely a mention of this anywhere in corporate media. Why is that do you think? Austerity economics and deregulation have virtually destroyed the American middle class, certainly made it a shadow of its former self. In those European countries which embraced Austerity Economics a similar process has been going on. At the same time India, China, the Asia-Pacific nations, are creating a middle class that will dwarf its White counterpart. Power will shift. Our intransigence concerning climate change, means leadership will go elsewhere, and will increase the speed of this transfer.
We are going into a different world. And because profit is our only cultural priority, we are doing it rather badly.
China and India lead Asia’s middle class growth.
Credit: BBC
In his last State of the Union address, President Obama made a pitch for “middle class economics” to help America’s beleaguered middle class, which continues to face stagnant wages, job displacement and soaring college costs and debt. His stated goal was to provide Americans with the requisite tools to get ahead in a fast-paced, constantly changing global economy. Of course, the United States middle class is not alone. Those in other advanced industrial countries are suffering similar or worse fates.
Meanwhile, an opposing trend is sweeping the developing world. Both the size and spending of the middle class in emerging market and developing countries are surging, particularly in China and India. By 2030, Asia-Pacific countries will comprise nearly two-thirds of the global middle class, dwarfing the projected one-fifth for Europe and North America combined. (emphasis added) Seized by the dramatic eastward shift of global consumption, a growing number of analysts are examining the potential economic and political […]
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Claire Moser, Research and Advocacy Associate with the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress - Climate Progress
Stephan: On this Fourth of July, as hundreds of thousands of Americans celebrate in our nation's wonderful parks and forests, the Koch brothers are scheming to privatize these public lands.The brothers, and Donald Trump illustrate an important point that corporate media just doesn't seem to want to talk about: It is possible to make a great deal of money, and still be a wretched human being and/or a clown. Making money and being a decent human being are different skills, and it does not follow they will always be together. The Kochs are living "Mr. Burns."
Credit: Shutterstock
Just in time for the Fourth of July — when millions of people across the country will visit America’s national parks and other public lands — the Koch brothers are rolling out their latest campaign against these treasured places: pushing for no more national parks.
In an op-ed published in Tuesday’s New York Times, Reed Watson, the executive director at the Koch-backed Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), along with a research associate at the Center, call for no more national parks, citing the backlog in maintenance for existing parks.
“True conservation is taking care of the land and water you already have, not insatiably acquiring more and hoping it manages itself,” the op-ed reads. “Let’s maintain what we’ve already got, so we can protect it properly,” it concludes.
While the authors seem to push for “true conservation” from the federal government, in reality, PERC has a long history of advocating for the privatization of America’s national parks and other public lands, and has significant ties to the Koch brothers […]
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Coleen Jose, Kim Wall and Jan Hendrik Hinzel, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: There are hundreds of facilities storing nuclear waste. They are all aging, their maintenance under-funded, and their potential for catastrophe very high. Here's what I mean. Once again why do I find these stories in publications like the Guardian, and not The New York Times, or on ABC News?
Bravo Crater at Bikini Atoll, site of the 1954 hydrogen explosion where the island of Nam was destroyed.
Credit: Alamy
RUNIT ISLAND — Black seabirds circle high above the giant concrete dome that rises from a tangle of green vines just a few paces from the lapping waves of the Pacific. Half buried in the sand, the vast structure looks like a downed UFO.
At the summit, figures carved into the weathered concrete state only the year of construction: 1979. Officially, this vast structure is known as the Runit Dome. Locals call it The Tomb.
Below the 18-inch concrete cap rests the United States’ cold war legacy to this remote corner of the Pacific Ocean: 111,000 cubic yards of radioactive debris left behind after 12 years of nuclear tests.
Brackish water pools around the edge of the dome, where sections of concrete have started to crack away. Underground, radioactive waste has already started to leach out […]
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Stephan: Archaeology is one of the most exciting areas of science peeling back the curtains that occlude our past. Here is the latest.
Journal Reference:
- Giuseppe Etiope. Seeps in the Ancient World: Myths, Religions, and Social Development. Natural Gas Seepage, 2015 DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-14601-0_9
The “eternal flame” at the Zoroastrian Ateshgah “Fire Temple” near Baku, Azerbaijan. The temple was built over natural burning seeps that are today extinct. The flame in the photo is now artificially fed via a gas pipe. Active natural flames are instead found at Yanardag, located approximately 9 km NE.
Credit: Guisepe Etiope
Gas and oil seeps have been part of religious and cultural practices for thousands of years.
Seeps from which gas and oil escape were formative to many ancient cultures and societies. They gave rise to legends surrounding the Delphi Oracle, Chimaera fires and “eternal flames” that were central to ancient religious practices – from Indonesia and Iran to Italy and Azerbaijan. Modern geologists and oil and gas […]
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Erica Hellerstein, - Think Progress
Stephan: Several readers wrote me today asking me why I feel that Christian fundamentalism is, as I have written, "the most dangereous toxic social movement in the country today." Was it just some "liberal bias against believing Christians, or do you really have evidence?" I think that is an important question so today's SR is dedicated to answering it.
I want to be very clear here. I am not anti-Christian, or anti any religion. Personally I am best described as "spiritual but not religious" as Pew Research has it. But I understand formal religious affiliation is an important part of many people's lives, and I respect that.
However SR deals in facts, and the facts are quite definitive: a large albeit minority of people in this country, using Christianity as their cover story, have serious psychological issues which they constantly and passionately try to impose on others who do not hold their beliefs. These people should not be confused with what used to be called traditional mainstream Christianity. And wherever this theocratic right minority are successful the social outcomes that result are notably inferior. On the basis of facts the Theocratic Right's view of how to order the world, again and again has produced measurably disastrous anti-life, anti-wellness results.
So let's start with the sexual dysfunction of the Right and what results.
I am doing this edition because we face a civilization threatening trend, climate change, and the Theocratic Right in a hundred ways is stopping us from dealing with it appropriately. I stress again, my position is not anti-religious. Religion is simply the form, not the substance of the issue.
In early February, Kelly Wortham’s sixth-grade son brought home a letter from Jarrett Middle School in Springfield, Missouri. The letter, from the Missouri State University School of Social Work, informed Wortham and other parents at Jarrett that their children were “being invited to take part in an abstinence-based education program designed to reduce teen pregnancy in southwest Missouri.”
The program, the letter assured, “is designed to teach teens about the benefits of choosing abstinence and how to better communicate with parents/guardians, families, and peers.” The course would utilize “Choosing the Best,” a self-described “abstinence-focused” curriculum published by a Georgia-based company of the same name. Unless Wortham and her husband chose not to sign the letter and consent to the program, it would be taught to their son in the upcoming month.
Wortham, concerned by what her son might be taught in their “deeply conservative state,” contacted the school and asked to see the curriculum. “We were told by the principal, the vice principal, and the health teacher that this was an abstinence-centered course but not abstinence only,” she explained. “And that generally nobody had a problem with it but we were welcome to review the materials.”
A few days later, Wortham received an […]
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