Monday, September 24th, 2018
Ed Pilkington, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: We have only a few days before the election. Please check to see that you are properly registered and can vote. The christofascists are doing everything they can to stop you from voting. They do not believe in democracy only its sham forms. It's up to you.
With the midterm elections rapidly approaching, and with so much riding at both national and state level on voter turnout, the stakes could not be higher.
Credit: Justin Lane/EPA
In June last year, Luis, a resident of Virginia, was astonished to discover that his name and personal details, including home address, had been posted on the internet by a group known as the Public Interest Legal Foundation (Pilf).
Luis’s data had been released by the group, along with hundreds of other names, as an appendix to Pilf’s two-part report called “Alien Invasion”. The front cover showed a UFO hovering ominously over a billboard on which the famous tourism slogan “Virginia is for lovers” had been photoshopped to read: “Virginia is for aliens”.
In lurid language, Pilf claimed that it had uncovered proof that “large numbers of ineligible aliens are registering to vote and casting ballots”. It warned its readers: “Your vote is at risk. New alien voters are being added to the rolls month after month, and […]
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Monday, September 24th, 2018
Paola Rosa-Aquino, - Grist
Stephan: I take this to be good news. Teachers, ordinary citizens, have had enough. They deal with children, they think about the future, they are as fed up as I am, and perhaps you are, with the climate change denial of Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, the rest of the Republican Congressional zombies, and the mafia gang in the White House. This is what it is going to take, a citizen uprising showing that enough is enough. Think about what is going in Florence, North Carolina, Houston, New Orleans, Puerto Rico, and the American Virgins.
We as a people, as a country, cannot afford the greed and stupidity which is crippling us.
Policymakers should have acted swiftly to mitigate the effects of rising greenhouse gas emissions decades ago, when climate science was first making the rounds. Alas, the American political establishment gets a D for not doing its climate homework. And to make matters worse, the public is still divided over whether humanity has contributed to climate change! Well, these teachers have had enough.
A group representing tens of thousands of science teachers, administrators, and educators recently published a statement showing its support for “decades of research and overwhelming scientific consensus” that the planet is changing. Why now? Because “teachers are facing pressure to not only eliminate or de-emphasize climate change science, but also to introduce non-scientific ideas in science classrooms,” the National Science Teachers Association statement says.
Last year, New Mexico’s public education agency launched a behind-closed-doors effort to eliminate the term “climate change” from science teaching standards. The phrase was to be replaced with “temperature fluctuation.” (Not the same thing!) The attempt was foiled in part by teachers, who spoke out against the move. And a comparable issue played out Idaho in February. […]
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Monday, September 24th, 2018
Julie Zauzmer, Reporter - The Washington Post
Stephan: My only interest in religions is anthropological. In my view, they all arise as systems to open to nonlocal consciousness, and I study them for the protocols they develop to do that. All the Abrahamic religions are patriarchies and essentially have iron age dogmas. Now their views on sex and gender have come into direct conflict with the cultures that have evolved in the second decade of the 21st century.
What I find particularly interesting is how many women continue to be comfortable as second-class human beings subordinate to men, and why they do that. This article is one of the few I have seen that tries to address the thinking behind this trend.
Rhonda Kelley, left, hosts female students for tea in the president’s home on the campus of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary
Credit: Julie Zauzmer/The Washington Post
NEW ORLEANS — Growing up in rural Mississippi, Gracie Robinson decided early on that she would never get married.
In her Baptist church, she heard the preaching: The Bible orders women to be submissive to their husbands. Robinson didn’t want to be submissive.
This summer, 26 and unmarried and enrolled in a seminary 300 miles from the dusty backwater she describes growing up in, she’s holding court, ranting over garlic fries and gumbo that she’ll never let a man control her.
“Every time I think about it, it just burns me up!” she says, as the other female seminarians laugh and clap.
And then Robinson’s tone changes. Matter-of-fact, she says about a husband: “True enough, he is the head of the household. And he is the spiritual leader.”
And her friends wholeheartedly agree to that, too.
This is the challenge and the contradiction of being […]
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Monday, September 24th, 2018
, - The Raw Story/Reuters
Stephan: The United States spends its money on the military and war. It amounts to trillions of dollars. That's why our airports are so shabby, our roads so rough, our bridges so problematic, our water systems dangerous and failing. And as for trains; their status is pathetic.
Other nations spend their money on building 21st-century infrastructure. This new Chinese train being but one example. We are falling further and further behind.
A Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail train is seen at West Kowloon Terminus at the first day of service of the Hong Kong Section of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link, in Hong Kong, China
Credit: REUTERS/Tyrone Siu
Hong Kong’s controversial bullet train got off to a smooth start on Sunday, as hundreds of passengers whistled north across the border at speeds of up to 200 kph (125 mph), deepening integration of the former British colony with mainland China.
While the $11 billion rail project has raised fears for some over Beijing’s encroachment on the Chinese-ruled city’s cherished freedoms, passengers at the sleek harbourfront station were full of praise for a service that reaches mainland China in less than 20 minutes.
“Out of 10 points, I give it nine,” said 10-year-old Ng Kwan-lap, who was traveling with his parents on the first train leaving for Shenzhen at 7 a.m.
“The train is great. It’s very smooth when it hits speeds of 200 kilometers per hour.”
Mainland Chinese immigration officers are stationed in one part of the modernist […]
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Sunday, September 23rd, 2018
Stephan: There is so much corruption, so much scandal in the Trump administration and the Republican Congress that the immigrant story and the child concentration camps have been lost to the media in the toxic fog. But that doesn't mean this despicable trend has ended, quite the contrary. There literally seems to be no level of inhumanity to which Trump and the Republicans will not sink. What's next, the ovens?
Central American immigrants
The federal government is officially using children who arrive in the US unaccompanied as a means to identify — and sometimes arrest — their unauthorized-immigrant relatives who step forward to take custody of them.
A high-ranking Immigration and Customs Enforcement official told a Senate committee Tuesday that between June and September, ICE agents had arrested 41 unauthorized immigrants who had agreed to serve as “sponsors” of unaccompanied children in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services.
In the hearing, ICE’s Matt Albence said a “large chunk” of those arrested were criminals. But a follow-up inquiry from CNN’s Tal Kopan revealed that 70 percent had been arrested for “simple immigration violations” — in other words, for being unauthorized immigrants.
The news confirms fears that immigration advocates have had for months — and will almost certainly make the already difficult task of placing children with sponsors even harder. HHS is already facing heavy criticism from Democrats for holding a record 12,800 immigrant children in custody instead of releasing […]
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