Barbara F. Walter, Rohr Professor of International Relations at the School of Global Policy & Strategy at the University of California at San Diego - The Washington Post
Stephan: This is a brilliant fact-based assessment of what is really going on in the United States, and reflects my own views as regular readers will recognize. I urge you to read it; as a nation we are in real trouble and only policies that foster wellbeing will bring us back to social health, and only you can make that happen
Supporters of then-President Donald Trump scaled the wall on the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Credit: Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
I will never forget interviewing Berina Kovac, who had lived in multiethnic Sarajevo in the early 1990s, when Bosnia and Herzegovina was moving toward independence from Yugoslavia. Though militias had begun to organize in the hills and former colleagues increasingly targeted her with ethnic slurs, Kovac continued to go to work, attend weddings and take weekend holidays, trusting that everything would work out. One evening in March 1992, she was at home with her infant son when the power went out. “And then, suddenly,” Kovac told me, “you started to hear machine guns.”
The civil war that followed, however, was not surprising to those who had been following the data. A year and a half earlier, the CIA had issued a report predicting that Yugoslavia would fall apart within two years and that civil war was a distinct possibility. One reason, the agency noted, was that citizens were organizing themselves into […]
Stephan: By this or any social outcome data you choose America is not the leader, or the most exceptional country, we are in fact -- literally -- very sick. The only thing that is going to save us is making the fostering of wellbeing our first priority, and democracies are healthier than other social forms of governance.
Denmark, New Zealand and Finland were joint first in a list of the least corrupt nations in the world, while South Sudan was at the bottom, an anti-graft watchdog found in its annual report.
The U.S. dropped out of the top 25 of the least corrupt nations for the first time as it ‘faces continuous attacks on free and fair elections’, the same study found.
Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index, which measures the perception of public sector corruption according to experts and businesspeople, ranks 180 countries and territories on a scale of a ‘highly corrupt’ 0 to a ‘very clean’ 100
Denmark, New Zealand and Finland tied for first place with 88 points each; the first two were unchanged, while Finland gained three points.
Meanwhile, South Sudan was at the bottom of the list with 11 points, making it the worst country for corruption.
Norway, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany completed the top 10, while the U.K. was ranked 11th with 78 points.
Stephan: This is a sign of America being an an anocracy, as described in the first article in today's edition. CRT is not taught in K-12 schools. It is a subject taken up only at the university level. What this is really about is making a lie about America's racial history the official and only version of history taught, just as we are becoming a majority minority multi-racial, multi-ethnic population.
Signs are seen on a bench during a rally against “critical race theory” (CRT) being taught in schools at the Loudoun County Government center in Leesburg, Virginia on June 12, 2021. Credit: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty
The day after the Florida state Senate’s education committee passed a bill banning public schools and private businesses from making people feel “discomfort” when learning about U.S. racial history, a school district in central Florida canceled a teacher training seminar about the civil rights movement that had been months in the planning.
This past Saturday, Dr. J. Michael Butler, the Kenan Distinguished Professor of History at Flagler College in St. Augustine, was supposed to lead a day-long seminar for Osceola County elementary school teachers on “The Long Civil Rights Movement.” The event was hosted by the nonprofit National Council for History Education, a leading provider of professional development for history teachers, and was part of a three-year partnership between the council and the district to enrich history education at underserved public schools. (Osceola County, just southeast of Orlando, has a population […]
Editorial Staff Texas Tribune, - Raw Story / Texas Tribune
Stephan: The White supremacy male dominant christofascists that control Texas, just as it stands on the border of becoming a majority-minority state, is doing everything they can think of to keep the future White minority in power. It has made Texas a very ugly state.
Texas Agricultural commissioner Sid Miller.
Igalious “Ike” Mills grew up working his family’s farm in the Piney Woods town of Nacogdoches. His siblings still keep it running, relying on a lot of the same equipment used by their father and grandfather.
Mills, who is Black, spends much of his energy trying to connect a dwindling number of Black farmers with state and federal programs that can help them keep their operations running. So it was welcome news last year when Congress passed a law intended to help cover the debts of thousands of “socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers” and correct the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s historic discrimination, long recognized by the agency itself.
But Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller stepped in. He is among the many white litigants challenging the law, which a federal judge temporarily blocked as court cases play out. And even though Miller filed the suit in April as a private citizen, Mills says his perch as the state’s agriculture commissioner is stoking frustration from farmers of color who already distrust […]
Stephan: The increase of housing costs is having a significant effect on the communities where it is happening. Here on my island it is becoming almost impossible for younger singles, or young couples to find a place to live they can afford and this, in turn, is making it hard for restaurants to get staff, or shops to get clerks, or the hospital to find staff.
A “for rent” sign posted on an apartment building on June 2, 2021, in San Francisco. Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty
Prospective homebuyers and renters across the United States have seen prices surge and supply plummet during the coronavirus pandemic. Amid these circumstances, about half of Americans (49%) say the availability of affordable housing in their local community is a major problem, up 10 percentage points from early 2018, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in October 2021.
Another 36% of U.S. adults said in the fall that affordable housing availability is a minor problem in their community, while just 14% said it is not a problem.
Americans’ concerns about the availability of affordable housing have outpaced worries about other local issues. The percentage of adults who say this is a major problem where they live is larger than the shares who say the same about drug addiction (35%), the economic and health impacts of COVID-19 (34% and 26%, respectively) and crime (22%).
Opinions on the question of housing affordability differ by a variety […]
