NICHOLAS TURNER and JEREMY TRAVIS, President of the Vera Institute of Justice and President of John Jay College of Criminal Justice - The New York Times
Stephan: The American Gulag is a national shame, and a blight on the integrity of the United States. With five per cent of the world's population we have 25 per cent of the world's prisoners. Many, if not most, housed in facilities that are, or should be, a scandal and embarrassment.
And the prison privatization drive has proven that making profit out of warehousing human beings is not only a morally scummy activity, but one that produces even worse outcomes than the publicly owned prisons.
Here is a report on how another country, Germany, handles prisons. It makes a humiliating comparison.
I am currently in Sweden presenting a paper at a water conference, and for the past three days I have been listening to the views Scandinavians hold about the United States. City on a shining hill. Forget that. How about dangerous bully run by a corrupt oligarchy, and a country a number of people have told me they now avoid. "I had always wanted to visit Chicago, but my wife thinks it is just too dangerous," "Yes, I agree, how can you live in a country where the police shoot people for no reason that makes sense," was an exchange I heard at dinner tonight.
A modern German prison cell.
Earlier this summer, we led a delegation of people concerned about the United States criminal justice system to visit some prisons in Germany and observe their conditions. What we saw was astonishing.
The men serving time wore their own clothes, not prison uniforms. When entering their cells, they slipped out of their sneakers and into slippers. They lived one person per cell. Each cell was bright with natural light, decorated with personalized items such as wall hangings, plants, family photos and colorful linens brought from home. Each cell also had its own bathroom separate from the sleeping area and a phone to call home with. The men had access to communal kitchens, with the utensils a regular kitchen would have, where they could cook fresh food purchased with wages earned in vocational programs.
We hoped that we were getting a glimpse of what the future of the American criminal justice system could look like.
This is an encouraging moment for American advocates of criminal justice reform. After […]
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Stephan: Here is the latest chapter in the similarities and differences between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens.
Neanderthals had bigger eyes
Credit: NHM/Alamy
We won’t ever come face to face with a real-life Neanderthal. They went extinct thousands of years ago. All we can do is use their remains to reconstruct what they were like.
In many ways they were a lot like us. In fact they were so similar, our species actually interbred with theirs.
Nevertheless there were some differences. One stands out: they had weirdly large eyes.
On the face of it, big eyes sound like a good thing. Presumably, having bigger eyes meant the Neanderthals could see better than us.
But according to one controversial theory, Neanderthals’ big eyes played a key role in their demise.
Neanderthals were around before we evolved. They first appeared around 250,000 years ago and spread throughout Europe and Asia.
Our own species, Homo sapiens, evolved in Africa about 200,000 years ago. They reached Europe around 45,000 years ago, and found it was inhabited by Neanderthals.
Both their eyes and their brain’s visual system were larger than ours
We co-existed with them for 5,000 years, according to […]
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Saturday, August 8th, 2015
Mary Green Swig, Steven L. Swig and Roger Hickey, - Truthout
Stephan: Here is the latest on America's out of control student debt problem.
At the moment I am in Sweden presenting at a water conference. There are a number of college and even some high school students in the audience and I have enjoyed talking with them about their educational experience. College for these Scandinavians, they come from several countries, is so radically different than what I hear from American students that I can hardly reconcile the differences.
For these kids college is either free or very low cost. Neither they nor their families, they tell me, have any particular concern about cost, and the idea of graduating with a life-long debt that they and their families must shoulder seems, as one young woman told me, "deeply weird." I can only agree.
Credit: Shutterstoock
It will not be news to 41 million Americans that this nation is in the middle of a student debt crisis. That’s the number of people burdened by student loan payments. But many people, including many student debt holders, may be surprised to learn that people can be pursued for student debt even into their elder years.
In fact, the government is withholding Social Security payments for some retirees because their student loans have not been fully repaid. This is a growing problem that Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) have asked the government to study in greater depth.
“Garnishing Social Security benefits defeats the entire point of the program – that’s why we don’t allow banks or credit card companies to do it,” said Sen. McCaskill. “Social Security is the sole means of retirement income for tens of millions of Americans, and allowing those benefits to be garnished to collect student loan debt cuts a dangerous hole in our safety net.”
That is one problem with this practice. But, as we […]
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Saturday, August 8th, 2015
Jonathan Tasini / Chelsea Green , - Alternet
Stephan: While the Republican candidates bloviate and rant, dancing like crazed tap-dancers to avoid stating any specifics Bernie Sanders, who the corporate media won't even cover in any depth, is proposing simple straightforward and very effective policy options. Here are ten specific policies he would carry out. Do these make sense to you? They do to me.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt)
Credit: aattp.org
(This article is excerpted from The Essential Bernie Sanders and His Vision for America by Jonathan Tasini (Chelsea Green Publishing, September 2015) and is published here with permission of the publisher. The book will be available nationwide on September 8th, which is Sanders’ birthday.)
“What a lot of people are feeling [about Sanders] is that there is somebody speaking to their issues. I think that’s why you’re seeing so many people come out. People are sick and tired of corporate America, both Republican and Democrat.”
—Troy Jackson, a logger from Allagash and former majority leader of the Maine Senate
Everyone cares about how the government spends its money, especially people who embrace the idea that smart, progressive government is a force for good. From the time he was watching taxpayer money as mayor of Burlington right up through his service in the House and Senate, Bernie has always looked for the proper balance between, on the one hand, strong, effective programs that look out for the […]
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Saturday, August 8th, 2015
Natasha Geiling, - Climate Progress
Stephan: New Zealand has gotten the message and has chosen to exit the world of coal. A small country, but very good news.
New Zealand coal plant to close.
Credit: Shutterstock
It appears that New Zealand is finally ready to throw their domestic coal habit into Mount Doom — by 2018, the country will cease to use coal as a source of domestic energy production.
“Historically coal has played an important role in ensuring the security of New Zealand’s electricity supply, particularly in dry years where our hydro-lake levels are low,” Simon Bridges, New Zealand’s Energy and Resources Minister, said in a statement. “But significant market investment in other forms of renewable energy in recent years, particularly in geothermal, means that a coal backstop is becoming less of a requirement.”
Bridges’ statement comes on the heels of the country’s largest electricity and gas retailer, Genesis Energy, announcing its intentions to shut down the last of their two coal-fired boilers at the Huntly Power Station, located south of Auckland, by December of 2018.
“Its closure marks the end of coal-fired power generation in New Zealand,” Bridges said, noting that […]
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