RAKESH KOCHHNAR , Researcher - Pew Research Center - truthdig
Stephan:
Male dominance is so universal across time, culture, and geography that I think it is genetic; we are high-order primates after all. But that doesn't mean it can't change. It is all about culture and individual choice. Those societies that choose equality are going to prosper, they already do, compared with nations that don't get it. And the difference is going to become more pronounced as the Great Schism proceeds,
Women in the U.S. still earn only 82 cents for every dollar earned by a man. Credit: AndreyPopov, NTB / CC
The gender pay gap – the difference between the earnings of men and women – has barely closed in the United States in the past two decades. In 2022, American women typically earned 82 cents for every dollar earned by men. That was about the same as in 2002, when they earned 80 cents to the dollar. The slow pace at which the gender pay gap has narrowed this century contrasts sharply with the progress in the preceding two decades: In 1982, women earned just 65 cents to each dollar earned by men.
There is no single explanation for why progress toward narrowing the pay gap has all but stalled in the 21st century. Women generally begin their careers closer to wage parity with men, but they lose ground as they age and progress through their work lives, a pattern that has remained consistent over time. The pay gap persists even though women today are […]
Georgia is about to politicize its legal system so that Republicans can control who is prosecuted, thus protecting Republicans like Trump, and removing prosecutors who offend Republican politicians. Variations of this idea have passed both houses of the state legislature, and Governor Kemp has announced he is in support of this idea and will sign the bill that arrives on his desk. That will effectively end Georgia as a democracy with an independent judiciary. American Red states are very quickly moving to establish an authoritarian anocracy controlled by Republicans.
Fulton County Attorney General Fani Willis Credit: Natrice Miller / Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia Republicans are staunch law and order types who back the blue and support local control … except when Democrats succeed in electing district attorneys who enforce their own priorities. In that case, the legislature needs to swing into action to tell those prosecutors what’s what!
This week, Georgia joined the ranks of states proposing bills to impose statewide oversight on local prosecutors and even remove them from office if they fall out of favor with the ruling party. SB 92, which passed the Georgia Senate 32-24 on Thursday, would create a Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission composed of gubernatorial and legislative appointees empowered to “discipline, remove, and cause involuntary retirement of appointed or elected district attorneys or solicitors-general” for “mental or physical incapacity,” “willful misconduct in office,” or “willful and persistent failure to carry out duties.”
As the New York Times points out, the blanket refusal by some local district attorneys to prosecute abortion, even as dozens of states impose […]
We are a country sliding into christofascism and one of the signs is that the principal civil violence we experience is being perpetrated by far right supporters.
Payton Gendron (C) is escorted back into the courtroom by deputies after a disruption during sentencing in Buffalo, New York State, the United States, on Feb. 15, 2023. Credit: Derek Gee / Buffalo News / Xinhua / Getty
Domestic extremists killed at least 25 people in the United States last year and all of them had ties to forms of right-wing extremism, including white supremacy, anti-government extremism and right-wing conspiracy theorists, according to a new report by the Anti-Defamation League.
Domestic extremist-related mass killings have increased in the past 12 years with most of them being tied to right-wing extremists, the ADL found. Researchers say the most concerning incidents are shootings inspired by white supremacist “accelerationist” propaganda urging such attacks.
“White supremacists who consider themselves accelerationist believe that there’s no way they will ever be able to reform or change society to reflect what white supremacists want [and] the only option really is to actually destroy society and from the ashes, build a new white-dominated or white only society,” said Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the […]
Watching footage about CPAC and, particularly criminal Trump's address, what struck me is how openly fascist the Republican Party has become. They don't even bother to disguise it anymore. I'm not sure their full intentions have been fully comprehended by most Americans. Merrick Garland's lack of spine about indicting Trump is going to now cause a horrible crisis. If Trump isn't indicted he will be vindicated. If he is indicted his more crazed supporters will cause violence and disruption. If he had been indicted a few months after he left office we would be through that sequence. Now, years later one way or another, it is going to happen in the midst of a presidential election
Former U.S. President and 2024 presidential hopeful Donald Trump speaks during the 2023 Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC) Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, on March 4, 2023. Credit: Roberto Schmidt/AFP / Getty
Former U.S. president headlines ousted autocrat double-header by following Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro at annual far-right convention.
The former presidents of Brazil and the United States took the stage CPAC on Saturday where both fascist politicians continued to sow doubt about their respective electoral defeats as they received standing ovations from the annual convention’s far-right attendees.
Brazil’s disgraced former leader Jair Bolsonaro—whose supporters stormed government offices in January after his successor, leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, was sworn into office—was brought onto the stage this year’s “diminished” CPAC gathering to blaring rock music and loud cheers from the crowd.
Addressing the American audience, Bolsonaro indicated once more his doubts that he lost the Brazilian election fairly, saying, “I had way more support in 2022 than I had in 2018, and I don’t understand why the numbers said the opposite.”
I just loved this story. Rats so long despised can now be saviors. Also, just conceiving of this system, and then making it real, as described here, is an amazing example of creative innovation; a new way of thinking.
A modern rat explorer Credit: APOPO
After the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria on Monday—with more than 19,000 deaths as of the morning of February 9—rescuers have been racing to find survivors in the rubble of collapsed buildings. At some sites, search and rescue dogs are aiding the effort. But future disasters might also get help from an unlikely source: rats that are currently training to work in earthquakes’ aftermath.
“They can go deep into the rubble, and penetrate where dogs may not be able to go,” says Sander Verdiesen, an electrical engineer working with Apopo, the nonprofit training the rats. The organization has been working with rats for more than a decade to detect land mines in Africa, relying on the rats’ extraordinary sense of smell. Several years ago, GEA, a Turkish humanitarian organization, reached out to the group to propose training the rats to also work on search and rescue missions.
As they train for future disasters, the rats wear a backpack with a tiny […]
