usatoday | A fourth-grade teacher in southern Idaho is being criticized after
having her students use permanent markers to draw on the faces of
classmates who failed to meet reading goals.
Some parents and
administrators say the punishments given to nine students in Summer
Larsen's class were inappropriate and left the children feeling shamed.
Cindy
Hurst said recently her 10-year-old son came home from school Nov. 5
with his entire face — including his eyelids — scribbled on with green,
red and purple markers.
"He was humiliated, he hung his head and
wanted to go wash his face," Hurst told The Times-News of Twin Falls.
"He knows he's a slow reader. Now he thinks he should be punished for
it."
Larsen, who has taught at the school for six years, didn't
respond to requests for comment. But Cassia County School District
Superintendent Gaylen Smyer confirmed what took place in her classroom,
though he didn't name Larsen.
The students were allowed to choose
their own incentive to meet the reading goal, but instead of a reward,
the class chose a punishment: Students who failed to meet the goal could
either stay inside at recess until it was met, or have their faces
written on by classmates who met the goals.
Nine students didn't
meet the goals, the paper reported Friday. Three chose to forgo recess,
and the other six chose to have their faces marked on.
"Although
all the students in the class agreed to the incentive, once it occurred
it was not so well received. Nor should it have been," Smyer said.
lfb | Banking industry insiders are upset with Amex and Wal-Mart, that
also is offering prepaid cards, because these prepaid accounts would
amount to uninsured deposits, according to Andrew Kahr, who wrote a
scathing piece on the issue for American Banker.
Kahr rips into the idea with this analogy:
“To provide even lower ‘discount prices,’ should Wal-Mart
rent decaying buildings that don’t satisfy local fire laws and building
codes — and offer still better deals to consumers? And why should
Walmart have to honor the national minimum wage law, any more than Amex
honors state banking statutes? With Bluebird, Amex can already violate
both the Bank Holding Company Act and many state banking statues.”
Kahr is implying that regulated fractionalized banking is safe and
sound, while prepaid cards provided by huge companies like Amex and
Wal-Mart is a shady scheme set up to rip off consumers. The fact is, in
the case of IndyMac, panicked customers forced regulators to close the
S&L by withdrawing only 7% of the huge S&L’s deposits. It was
about the same for WaMu and Wachovia when regulators engineered sales of
those banks being run on. Bitcoin supporters, unlike the general
public, are well aware of fractionalized banking’s fragility.
Maybe what the banking industry is really afraid of is the Amexes and
Wal-Marts of the world creating their own currencies and banking
systems. Wal-Mart has tried to get approval to open a bank for years,
and bankers have successfully stopped the retail giant for competing
with them.
However, prepaid credit cards might be just the first step toward
Wal-Mart issuing their own currency — Marts — that might initially be
used only for purchases in Wal-Mart stores. But over time, it’s not hard
to imagine Marts being traded all over town and easily converted to
dollars, pesos, Yuan, or other currencies traded where Wal-Mart has
stores. Fist tap Dale.
policymic | The first retail worker strike against Wal-Mart has spread from Los Angeles, where it began last week, to stores in a dozen cities, a union official said Tuesday. According to the Huffington Post, Wal-Mart workers walked off the job in Dallas, Seattle, the San Francisco Bay area, Miami, the Washington, D.C., area, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Chicago and Orlando, said Dan Schlademan, director of the United Food and Commercial Workers' Making Change At Wal-Mart campaign. Workers also went on strike in parts of Kentucky, Missouri and Minnesota, he said.
Tuesday's walkouts included 88 workers from 28 stores ... a fraction of the 1.4 million who work at Wal-Mart, the world's largest private employer. Until Friday, when about 60 Wal-Mart employees walked off the job for a day in LA, no Wal-Mart retail workers had ever gone on strike, the union said.
The workers are protesting company attempts to "silence and retaliate against workers for speaking out for improvements on the job," according to a United Food and Commercial Workers news release. Walmart workers, who are not unionized, have long complained of low pay and a lack of benefits.
These workers must be heard. Here are 9 reasons why:
cbsnews | This holiday season, the biggest discount chains in the U.S. will
tell the tale of two very different shoppers: Those that have and those
that have not.
Walmart (WMT),
the world's largest retailer, on Thursday acknowledged that its
low-income shoppers continue to struggle in the economy and issued an
outlook for the fourth quarter -- which encompasses the holiday shopping
period -- that falls below Wall Street estimates. On the same day, its
smaller rival Target (TGT), which caters to more affluent shoppers, said it expects results during the quarter to exceed the Street's projections.
The two discounters offer valuable insight into how Americans will
spend in November and December, a period that's traditionally the
busiest shopping period of the year. Some merchants depend on the
holiday shopping season for up to 40 percent of their annual sales, but
economists watch the period closely to get a temperature reading on the
overall mood of American consumers.
The forecasts seem
to confirm a trend that has taken shape during the economic downturn.
Well-heeled shoppers spend more freely as the economy begins to show new
signs of life, while consumers in the lower-income brackets continue to
hold tight to their purse strings even as the housing and stock markets
rebound.
Walmart and Target both are discounters, but
they cater to different customers. Walmart, which says its customers'
average household income ranges from $30,000 to $60,000, hammers its
low-price message and focuses on stocking basics like tee shirts and
underwear along with household goods. But Target, whose customers have a
median household income of $64,000 a year, is known for carrying
discounted designer clothes and home decor under the same roof as
detergent and dishwashing liquid.
NYTimes | On a clear morning in May, Ron Douglas left his home in exurban Denver, eased into his Toyota pickup truck and drove to a business meeting at a Starbucks. Douglas, a bearded bear of a man, ordered a venti double-chocolate-chip Frappuccino — “the girliest drink ever,” he called it — and then sat down to discuss the future of the growing survivalist industry.
Many so-called survivalists would take pride in keeping far away from places that sell espresso drinks. But Douglas, a 38-year-old entrepreneur and founder of one of the largest preparedness expos in the country, isn’t your typical prepper.
At that morning’s meeting, a strategy session with two new colleagues, Douglas made it clear that he doesn’t even like the word “survivalist.” He believes the word is ruined, evoking “the nut job who lives out in the mountains by himself on the retreat.” Instead, he prefers “self-reliance.”
When prompted by his colleagues to define the term, Douglas leaned forward in his chair. “I’m glad you asked,” he replied. “Take notes. This is good.”
For the next several minutes, Douglas talked about emergency preparedness, sustainable living and financial security — what he called the three pillars of self-reliance. He detailed the importance of solar panels, gardens, water storage and food stockpiles. People shouldn’t just have 72-hour emergency kits for when the power grid goes down; they should learn how to live on their own. It’s a message that Douglas is trying to move from the fringe to the mainstream.
“Our main goal is to reach as many people and get the word out to as many people as we can, to get them thinking and moving in this direction,” he said. “Sound good?”
The preparedness industry, always prosperous during hard times, is thriving again now. In Douglas’s circles, people talk about “the end of the world as we know it” with such regularity that the acronym Teotwawki (tee-ought-wah-kee) has come into widespread use. The Vivos Group, which sells luxury bunkers, until recently had a clock on its Web site that was ticking down to Dec. 21, 2012 — a date that, thanks to the Mayan calendar, some believe will usher in the end times. But amid the alarmism, there is real concern that the world is indeed increasingly fragile — a concern highlighted most recently by Hurricane Sandy. The storm’s aftermath has shown just how unprepared most of us are to do without the staples of modern life: food, fuel, transportation and electric power.Fist tap Arnach.
wikipedia | The Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, known by foreigners as the Boxers, or "Yihe Magic Boxing", was a secret society founded in the northern coastal province of Shandong consisting largely of people who had lost their livelihoods due to imperialism and natural disasters.[6] The group originated from the Lí sect of the Ba gua religion group.[7] Foreigners came to call the well-trained, athletic young men "Boxers" due to the martial arts and calisthenics they practiced. The Boxers' primary feature was spirit possession, which involved "the whirling of swords, violent prostrations, and chanting incantations to Taoist and Buddhist spirits."[8]
The Boxers believed that through training, diet, martial arts, and
prayer they could perform extraordinary feats, such as flight. Further,
they popularly claimed that millions of spirit soldiers would
descend from the heavens and assist them in purifying China of foreign
influences. The Boxers consisted of local farmers/peasants and other
workers who were made desperate by disastrous floods and widespread
opium addiction and laid the blame on Christian missionaries, Chinese
Christians, and the Europeans colonizing their country. Missionaries
were protected under the policy of extraterritoriality. Chinese Christians were alleged also to have filed false lawsuits.[9] The Boxers called foreigners "Guizi" (鬼子, literally: demons),
a deprecatory term, and condemned Chinese Christian converts and
Chinese working for foreigners. The Boxers were only lightly armed with
rifles and swords, claiming supernatural invulnerability towards blows of cannon, rifle gunshots, and knife attacks. The Boxers were typical of millennarian movements, such as the American Indian Ghost Dance, often rising in societies under extreme stress.[10]
Several secret societies in Shandong predated the Boxers. In 1895,
Yuxian, a Manchu who was then prefect of Caozhou and would later become
provincial governor, acquired the help of the Big Sword Society
in fighting against bandits. Although the Big Swords had heterodox
practices, they were not seen as bandits by Chinese authorities. Their
efficiency in defeating banditry led to a flood of cases overwhelming
the magistrates' courts, to which the Big Swords responded by executing
the bandits that were apprehended.[11]
The Big Swords relentlessly hunted the bandits, but the bandits
converted to Catholic Christianity, gaining them legal immunity from
prosecution and also placed them under the protection of the foreigners.
The Big Swords responded by attacking bandit Catholic churches and
burning them.[12]
As a result, Yuxian executed several Big Sword leaders, but did not
punish anyone else. More secret societies started emerging after this.[13]
The early years saw a variety of village activities, not a broad
movement or a united purpose. Like the Red Boxing school or the Plum
Flower Boxers, the Boxers of Shandong were more concerned with
traditional social and moral values, such as filial piety, than with
foreign influences. One leader, for instance, Zhu Hongdeng (Red Lantern
Zhu), started as a wandering healer, specializing in skin ulcers, and
gained wide respect by refusing payment for his treatments.[14] Zhu claimed descent from Ming dynasty
Emperors, since his surname was the surname of the Ming Imperial
Family. He announced that his goal was to "Revive the Qing and destroy
the foreigners" ("Fu Qing mie yang").[15]
It starts with piracy in the Caribbean, which gives way to growing sugar
there - and forcing slaves from Africa to work them. Trade with India
brings wealth to men like Robert Clive who progress from trader to
governor. The empire grows piecemeal as chartered companies take over
large tracts of foreign territory - answering only to head office in the
City of London. Illegal opium sold to China makes a fortune for British
businessmen - but sparks a war with the Chinese emperor.
Druglibrary | IN a vague way, we are familiar with the "opium evil" in China, and some of
us have hazy ideas as to how it came about. The China Year Book for 1916 has this to say
on the subject: "The poppy has been known in China for 12 centuries, and its
medicinal use for 9 centuries. . . . It was not until the middle of the 17th century that
the practice of mixing opium with tobacco for smoking purposes was introduced into China.
This habit was indulged in by the Dutch in Java, and by them taken to Formosa, whence it
spread to Amoy and the mainland generally. There is no record to show when opium was first
smoked by itself, but it is thought to have originated about the end of the 18th century.
Foreign opium was first introduced by the Portuguese from Goa at the beginning of the 18th
century. In 1729, when the foreign import was 200 chests, the Emperor Yung Ching issued
the first anti-opium edict, enacting severe penalties on the sale of opium and the opening
of opium-smoking divans. The importation, however, continued to increase, and by 1790 it
amounted to over 4,000 chests annually. In 1796 opium smoking was again prohibited, and in
1800 the importation of foreign opium was again declared illegal. Opium was now
contraband, but the fact had no effect on the quantity introduced into the country, which
rose to 5,000 chests in 1820; 16,000 chests in 1830; 20,000 chests in 1838, and 70,000
chests in 1858."
The China Year Book makes no mention of the traders who carried these chests of opium
into China. The opium came from India, however, and the increase in importation
corresponds with the British occupation of India, and the golden days of the East India
Company. "Opium was now contraband, but that fact had no effect on the quantity
introduced into the country," smuggled in wholesale by the enterprising British
traders.
China was powerless to protect herself from this menace, either by protests or
prohibition. And as more and more of the drug was smuggled in, and more and more of the
people became victims of the habit, the Chinese finally had a tea-party, very much like
our Boston Tea Party, but less successful in outcome. In 1839, in spite of the fact that
opium smoking is an easy habit to acquire and had been extensively encouraged, the British
traders found themselves with 20,000 chests of unsold opium on their store-ships, just
below Canton. The Chinese had repeatedly appealed to the British Government to stop these
imports, but the British Government had turned a persistently deaf ear. Therefore the
Emperor determined to deal with the matter on his own account. He sent a powerful official
named Lin to attend to it, and Lin had a sort of Boston Tea Party, as we have said, and
destroyed some twenty thousand chests of opium in a very drastic way. Mr. H. Wells
Williams describes it thus: "The opium was destroyed in the most thorough manner, by
mixing it in parcels Of 200 chests, in trenches, with lime and salt water, and then
drawing off the contents into an adjacent creek at low tide."
After this atrocity, followed the first Opium War, when British ships sailed up the
river, seized port after port, and bombarded and took Canton. Her ships sailed up the
Yangtsze, and captured the tribute junks going up the Grand Canal with revenue to Peking,
thus stopping a great part of China's income. Peace was concluded in 1843, and Great
Britain came out well. She recompensed herself by taking the island of Hongkong; an
indemnity Of 21 million dollars, and Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo and Shanghai were
opened up as "treaty ports"-for the importation of opium and the
"open-door" in general.
Mr. Wells, in his "Middle Kingdom" describes the origin of this first war
with England: "This war was extraordinary in its origin as growing chiefly out of a
commercial misunderstanding; remarkable in its course as being waged between strength and
weakness, conscious superiority and ignorant pride; melancholy in its end as forcing the
weaker to pay for opium within its borders against all its laws, thus paralyzing the
little moral power its feeble government could exert to protect its subjects. . . . It was
a turning point in the national life of the Chinese race, but the compulsory payment of
six million dollars for the opium destroyed has left a stigma upon the English name."
He also says, "The conflict was now fairly begun; its issue between the parties so
unequally matched --one having almost nothing but the right on its side, the other
assisted by every material and physical advantage-could easily be foreseen" and
again, after speaking of it as being unjust and immoral, he concludes "Great Britain,
the first Christian power, really waged this war against the pagan monarch who had only
endeavored to put down a vice harmful to his people. The war was looked upon in this light
by the Chinese; it will always be so looked upon by the candid historian, and known as the
Opium War."
Within fifteen years after this first war, there was another one, and again Great
Britain came off victorious. China had to pay another indemnity, three million dollars,
and five more treaty ports were opened up. By the terms of the Treaty of Tientsin, the
sale of opium in China was legalized in 1858.
From a small pamphlet, "Opium: England's Coercive Policy and Its Disastrous
Results in China and India" by the Rev. John Liggins, we find the following: "As
a specimen of how both wars were carried on, we quote the following from an English writer
on the bombardment of Canton: 'Field pieces loaded with grape were planted at the end of
long, narrow streets crowded with innocent men, women and children, to mow them down like
grass till the gutters flowed with their blood.' In one scene of carnage, the Times
correspondent recorded that half an army of 10,ooo men were in ten minutes destroyed by
the sword, or forced into the broad river. " The Morning Herald " asserted that
"a more horrible or revolting crime than this bombardment of Canton has never been
committed in the worst ages of barbaric darkness."
Naturally, therefore, after the termination of these two wars, China gave up the
struggle. She had fought valiantly to protect her people from opium, but the resources of
a Christian nation were too much for her. Seeing therefore that the opium trade was to be
forced upon her, and that her people were doomed to degradation, she decided to plant
poppies herself. There should be competition at least, and the money should not all be
drained out of the country. Thus it came about that after 1858 extensive tracts of land
were given over to poppy production. Whole provinces or parts of provinces, ceased to grow
grain and other necessities, and diverted their rich river bottoms to the raising of
opium. Chinese opium, however, never supplanted Indian opium, being inferior to that
raised in the rich valley of the Ganges. The country merely had double quantities of the
drug, used straight or blended, to suit the purse or taste of the consumer.
Then, in 1906, the incredible happened. After over a hundred years of steady
demoralization, with half her population opium addicts, or worse still, making enormous
profits out of the trade, China determined to give up opium. In all history, no nation has
ever set itself such a gigantic task, with such a gigantic handicap. China, a country of
immense distances, with scant means of communication; with no common language, a land
where only the scholars can read and write, suddenly decided to free herself from this
vice. The Emperor issued an edict saying that in ten years' time all opium traffic must
cease, and an arrangement was made with Great Britain whereby this might be accomplished.
To the honor of America be it said that we assisted China in this resolution. We agreed to
see her through.
A bargain was then made between China and Great Britain, in 1907, China agreeing to
diminish poppy cultivation year by year for a period of ten years, and Great Britain
agreeing to a proportional decrease in the imports of Indian opium. A three years' test
was first agreed to, a trial of China's sincerity and ability, for Great Britain feared
that this was but a ruse to cut off Indian opium, while leaving China's opium alone in the
field. At the end of three years, however, China had proved her ability to cope with the
situation. Thus, for a period of ten years, both countries have lived up to their bargain,
the amount of native and foreign opium declining steadily in a decreasing scale. April 1,
1917, saw the end of the accomplishment.
China's part was most difficult. In the remote, interior provinces, poppies were grown
surreptitiously, connived at by corrupt officials who made money from the crops. However,
drastic laws were enacted and severe penalties imposed upon those who broke them. If poppy
cultivation could not be stopped, England would not hold to her end of the bargain. Not
only was there a nation of addicts to deal with, but these could obtain copious supplies
of opium from the foreign concessions, over which the Chinese had no control. We shall
show, in another article, to what extent this was carried on. Yet somehow, in some manner,
the impossible happened. Year by year, little by little, one province after another was
freed from poppy cultivation, until in 1917, China was practically free from the
native-grown drug, and foreign importation had practically ended.
In this manner, first by large smuggling, then by two opium wars, was China drugged
with opium. And in this manner, and to this extent, has she succeeded in freeing herself
from the curse. But in one way, she is not free. She has no control over the
extra-territorial holdings of European powers, for in each treaty port are the foreign
concessions already mentioned-German, Austrian, British, French, Russian. And in these
concessions, opium may be procured. Simply by crossing an imaginary line, in such cities
as Shanghai and Hongkong, can the Chinese buy as much opium as they choose. China will
never be rid of this menace till she is rid of these extraterritorial holdings. Opium
shops, licensed by foreign governments, are always ready to supply her people with the
forbidden drug.
We say that the China market is closed. So it is, in one way. But the British Opium
Monopoly is not ended. The year 1917 saw a tremendous blow dealt to the British opium
dealers, but other markets will be found. There are other countries than China whose
inhabitants can be taught this vice. The object of this discussion is to consider these
other countries, and to see to what extent the world is menaced by this possibility.
theatlantic | The white working class depends on government assistance more than
the population as a whole, yet its members heavily favor smaller
government and lower taxes -- and they strongly believe that the poor
are too dependent on government programs.
Nearly half of the white working class (46 percent) reported receiving
Social Security or disability benefits in the poll, versus 38 percent of
the overall population; they were also slightly more likely to receive
food stamps and unemployment benefits than the general population. Six
in 10 white working-class voters said the federal government should cut
back on services and reduce taxes. And three-fourths agreed with the
idea that "poor people have become too dependent on government
assistance programs." If Romney is able to get past his "47 percent"
comments, this may be why: Even those who frequently depend on
government strongly dislike the idea of dependency and entitlement.
The white working class has often been depicted as the backbone of the
Tea Party, angered by what they perceive as Obama's socialistic policies
and, in the president's own memorable phrase, "clinging to guns or religion." But the poll knocks down some of these myths:
* They're not the Tea Party: Only about 13 percent of
white working-class voters consider themselves part of the Tea Party,
and 34 percent say they share its values. Among college-educated whites,
the numbers are about the same -- 10 percent and 31 percent,
respectively.
* They're not unusually religious: About half (48
percent) go to church at least once a month, and 60 percent say religion
is important to them. That's about the same as the general population.
The white working class is more heavily evangelical, however -- 36
percent describe themselves as evangelicals, versus 21 percent of the
overall population.
* They're not culture warriors: On the wedge issues of
abortion and same-sex marriage, white working-class voters are pretty
evenly divided. They favor abortion being legal in all or most cases, 50
percent to 45 percent, and oppose allowing gays to marry, 50 percent to
43 percent. Less than 5 percent of these voters said abortion or gay
marriage was the most important issue, as opposed to 53 percent who
cited the economy.
* They want to tax the rich: Contra Joe the Plumber,
these voters aren't opposed to spreading the wealth around. "In fact,
white working-class Americans display a strong strain of economic
populism," the report states: 70 percent of them believe the economic
system unfairly favors the wealthy, and 62 percent want to raise taxes
on incomes over $1 million. And there's a clear reason both candidates
have accused each other of favoring outsourcing: 78 percent of white
working-class voters blame corporations moving jobs overseas for
America's economic woes.
yahoo | After two days of meetings at the
Republican Governors Association conference this week, New Mexico Gov.
Susana Martinez heard a lot about the party's need to reach new
constituencies--particularly women and ethnic minorities--but few
specifics about how.
As a Republican governor of
Mexican descent who won all but four counties in a Democratic state,
Martinez has ideas for how the party can reach voters who traditionally
support Democrats. But it's going to take some work--and a touch of
humility--from her colleagues.
"Republicans need to stop making
assumptions, and they need to start talking to younger people, people
of color, and ask them--not talk to them--ask
them, What is it that we can do better? How do we earn your vote? How
do we earn the ability for you to see that we can be the party that
will make your life better and that of your children?" Martinez said in
an interview after the conference here. "But we can't be the ones that
come and tell them how things are going to be and how we have all the
solutions."
President Barack Obama in 2012
expanded his lead among Hispanics, black voters, Asians and women,
according to exit polling, leaving many Republicans wondering what they
need do to adapt to the nation's rapidly shifting demographics.
The topic has dominated much of
the party's post-election soul searching. Some have placed part of the
blame on the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, who wrote off nearly half
the electorate as inevitable Obama voters when he told donors at a
closed-door fundraiser last spring that 47 percent of the population
would support Obama "no matter what." Martinez criticized Romney's
comments when they were reported in September, and on Wednesday
reiterated that she found them "ridiculous."
"It's a ridiculous statement to
make. You want to earn the vote of every single person you can earn,
whether they be someone who relies on," she said. "Why would you ever
write off 47 percent?"
Romney quotes Cleon Skausen
, boasts passionately about being a bishop and state leader in his church, the second coming in Jerusalem and Missouri, jes dayyum...., is it any wonder this cat couldn't run as himself?!?
NYTimes | Mr. Humphries, who was identified on Wednesday by law enforcement
colleagues, took the initial complaint from Jill Kelley, a Tampa woman
active in local military circles and a personal friend, about anonymous
e-mails that accused her of inappropriately flirtatious behavior toward
Mr. Petraeus.
The subsequent cyberstalking investigation uncovered an extramarital
affair between Mr. Petraeus and Paula Broadwell, his biographer, who
agents determined had sent the anonymous e-mails. It also ensnared Gen.
John R. Allen, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, after F.B.I.
agents discovered what a law enforcement official said on Wednesday
were sexually explicit e-mail exchanges between him and Ms. Kelley.
A spokesman for Ms. Kelley provided her version of events in two
conference calls with reporters on Wednesday. Ms. Kelley’s concern when
she took the e-mails to Mr. Humphries was that she feared the sender was
“stalking” Mr. Petraeus and General Allen, said the spokesman, who
asked not to be identified.
“She asks the agent, ‘What do you make of this?’ ” the spokesman said.
“The agent said: ‘This is serious. They seem to know the comings and
goings of a couple of generals.’ ”
General Allen himself had received a similar anonymous e-mail message,
sent by someone identified as “kelleypatrol,” advising him to stay away
from Ms. Kelley. The general forwarded it to Ms. Kelley, and they
discussed a concern that someone was cyberstalking them.
On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said he had asked the
Senate to postpone a confirmation hearing for General Allen’s next
assignment while the department’s inspector general reviewed his e-mail
correspondence with Ms. Kelley, which was discovered by F.B.I. agents
investigating her initial complaint.
Pentagon officials said the review covered more than 10,000 pages of
documents that included “inappropriate” messages. But associates of
General Allen have said that the two exchanged about a dozen e-mails a
week since meeting two years ago and that his messages were affectionate
but platonic.
A law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity,
disputed that assertion on Wednesday, saying some messages were clearly
sexual. Investigators were confident “the nature of the content
warranted passing them on” to the inspector general, the official said.
National Journal | They were said to be generals cut from the same cloth, David Petraeus and John Allen: whip-smart, adaptable, erudite and above reproach.
Indeed Allen was Petraeus’s hand-picked successor in Afghanistan, having
served as deputy commander at Centcom in Tampa, Fla., first under
Petraeus, then under Marine Gen. James Mattis. Petraeus and Allen, the
soldier and the Marine, represented, in other words, the very best that
the U.S. military has to offer.
And yet, in less than a week, the careers of two very different men
may be ruined as a result of alleged inappropriate behavior with women.
It was scandalous enough when Petraeus stepped down as CIA director
after an FBI investigation uncovered his extramarital affair with his
biographer, Paula Broadwell. The latest hairpin plot twist came early
Tuesday when the Defense Department abruptly announced that the
nomination of Allen, the outgoing commander in Afghanistan, to be
commander of NATO forces was “on hold” pending an investigation by the
FBI and the Pentagon inspector general related to his relationship with
Jill Kelley – the woman who kicked off the FBI probe by reporting
threatening emails she had received from Broadwell, and who has denied
having any relationship with Petraeus beyond family friend.
A senior U.S. defense official told National Journal on
Tuesday that investigators are now looking into “potentially
inappropriate communications” between Allen and Kelley, 37, a doctor’s
wife who worked at Centcom in Florida. According to The Washington Post,
in the course of the Petraeus-Broadwell probe, the FBI uncovered
between 20,000 and 30,000 documents — most of them e-mails —shared
between Kelley and Allen.
In the end, Petraeus’ downfall marks the formal finish to a career
that had in some ways passed its peak. The influence of his signature
contribution to U.S. military doctrine—expensive counterinsurgency
programs that take years to implement, with little to show in the way of
results, as in Afghanistan —has been fading.
As for Allen, his tenure in Afghanistan is proving at least as
troubled as Petraeus’, beset by “green-on-blue” attacks by Afghan
soldiers and officials on allied troops, and a stubborn Taliban
supported by Pakistani elements across the border.
During a visit to Afghanistan I made last May, he came across as
sober and largely humorless in manner as he described in intellectual
terms his strategic plans in Afghanistan. “There is this sense, and it’s
a very Western sense I think, that there is a Napoleonic decisive
battle that tends to end wars. In counterinsurgency, it’s much less
about that than about creating an enduring capacity that grows and
compounds on itself over time," Allen said. "And that’s what’s
happened.”
He was far less of a glamorous or show-boating figure than Petraeus.
Nevertheless, he’s now one of the leading men in a national soap opera.
slate | Using the dead-drop tactic can
certainly reduce the chances that sweeping surveillance dragnets will
gobble up your communications—but it is not exactly secure. The method was used by the planners of the Madrid train bombings
in 2004, which killed 191 people, helping them to operate below the
radar of Big Brother. However, law enforcement agencies over the years
have grown accustomed to terrorists using the dead drop, and
technologies have been developed to help counter it.
An interception tool developed by the networking company Zimbra, for
instance, was specifically designed to help combat email dead drops. Zimbra’s “legal Intercept” technology allows law enforcement agencies to obtain “copies of email messages
that are sent, received, or saved as drafts from targeted accounts.” An
account that is under surveillance, with the help of Zimbra’s
technology, will secretly forward all of its messages, including drafts,
to a “shadow account” used by law enforcement. This may have been how
the FBI was able to keep track of all correspondence being exchanged
between Petraeus and Broadwell.
(It’s also worth noting that archived draft emails stored alongside
sent and received messages on Google’s servers can actually be obtained
by law enforcement with very little effort. Due to the outdated Electronic and Communications and Privacy Act, any content stored in the cloud can be obtained by the government without a warrant if it’s older than six months, as Wiredreported last year.)
What this means is that if Petraeus and Broadwell had been savvy
enough to use encryption and anonymity tools, their affair would
probably never have been exposed. If they had taken advantage of PGP encryption,
the FBI would have been able to decipher their randy interactions only
after deploying Trojan-style spyware onto Broadwell’s computer. Further
still, if the lovers had only ever logged into their pseudonymous Gmail
accounts using anonymity tools like Tor, their real IP addresses would have been masked and their identities extremely difficult to uncover.
But then it is unlikely that they ever expected to come under FBI
surveillance. Their crime was a moral one, not a felony, so there was no
real reason to take extra precautions. In any other adulterous
relationship a pseudonym and a dead drop would be more than enough to
keep it clandestine, as my Slate colleague Farhad Manjoo noted in an email.
Broadwell slipped up when she sent the harassing emails—as that, as
far as we know, is what ended up exposing her and Petraeus to
surveillance. Whether the harassment was serious enough to merit email
monitoring is still to be established, as Emily Bazelon writes on “XX Factor.” It goes without saying, however, that the real error
here was ultimately made by Petraeus. If he had stayed faithful to his
wife of 38 years in the first place, he’d still be in charge at the
CIA—and I wouldn’t be writing about how he could have kept his adultery
secret more effectively by using encryption.
guardian | So not only did the FBI - again, all without any real evidence of a
crime - trace the locations and identity of Broadwell and Petreaus, and
read through Broadwell's emails (and possibly Petraeus'), but they also
got their hands on and read through 20,000-30,000 pages of emails
between Gen. Allen and Kelley.
This is a surveillance state run
amok. It also highlights how any remnants of internet anonymity have
been all but obliterated by the union between the state and technology
companies.
But, as unwarranted and invasive as this all is, there
is some sweet justice in having the stars of America's national security
state destroyed by the very surveillance system which they implemented
and over which they preside. As Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation put it this morning: "Who knew the key to stopping the Surveillance State was to just wait until it got so big that it ate itself?"
It
is usually the case that abuses of state power become a source for
concern and opposition only when they begin to subsume the elites who
are responsible for those abuses. Recall how former Democratic Rep. Jane
Harman - one of the most outspoken defenders of the illegal Bush
National Security Agency (NSA) warrantless eavesdropping program - suddenly began sounding like an irate, life-long ACLU privacy activist when it was revealed that the NSA had eavesdropped on her private communications
with a suspected Israeli agent over alleged attempts to intervene on
behalf of AIPAC officials accused of espionage. Overnight, one of the
Surveillance State's chief assets, the former ranking member of the
House Intelligence Committee, transformed into a vocal privacy proponent
because now it was her activities, rather than those of powerless
citizens, which were invaded.
With the private, intimate
activities of America's most revered military and intelligence officials
being smeared all over newspapers and televisions for no good reason,
perhaps similar conversions are possible. Put another way, having the
career of the beloved
CIA Director and the commanding general in Afghanistan instantly
destroyed due to highly invasive and unwarranted electronic surveillance
is almost enough to make one believe not only that there is a god, but
that he is an ardent civil libertarian.
The US operates a sprawling, unaccountable Surveillance State
that - in violent breach of the core guarantees of the Fourth Amendment
- monitors and records virtually everything even the most law-abiding
citizens do. Just to get a flavor for how pervasive it is, recall that
the Washington Post, in its 2010 three-part "Top Secret America" series,
reported:
"Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency
intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of
communications."
mockpaperscissors |Talking Points Memo pulls out the four most telling paragraphs from the NYTimes (paywall) story about the convoluted Patraeus affair story:
Ms. Kelley, a volunteer with wounded veterans and military families, brought her complaint to a rank-and-file agent she knew from a previous encounter with the F.B.I. office, the official also said. That agent, who had previously pursued a friendship with Ms. Kelley and had earlier sent her shirtless photographs of himself, was “just a conduit” for the complaint, he said. He had no training in cybercrime, was not part of the cyber squad handling the case and was never assigned to the investigation.
But the agent, who was not identified, continued to “nose around”
about the case, and eventually his superiors “told him to stay the hell
away from it, and he was not invited to briefings,” the official said.
The Wall Street Journal first reported on Monday night that the agent
had been barred from the case.
Later, the agent became convinced — incorrectly, the official said — that the case had stalled. Because of his “worldview,” as the official put it, he suspected a politically motivated cover-up to protect President Obama.
The agent alerted Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, who called
the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, on Oct. 31 to tell him of
the agent’s concerns.
The official said the agent’s self-described “whistle-blowing” was “a
little embarrassing” but had no effect on the investigation.
So… the shirtless FBI Agent–who’s advances were spurned by the ingenue Jill Kelley went to the GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor to tip him that a scandal was brewing that could help the GOP, you know, because of his world view.
The little factoid that kept confusing me as this stupid story unfolded was why Cantor was briefed and the President wasn’t, and now we know: Teabagging. This sad and stupid story now officially has no legs. I hope that Mrs. Petraeus gets a good settlement and that miserable little rat-fucker General gets what he deserves.
aljazeera | Defence Secretary Robert Gates referred to him as "the pre-eminent soldier-scholar-statesman of his generation".
But his critics say, the legacy of his career is not that stellar and
deserves far more scrutiny than the US media and politicians are
willing to give it.
Earlier this year, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis released a whistleblower report on conditions in Afghanistan.
He said that Petraeus consistently gave glowing and inaccurate
accounts of US military progress and that Petraeus built a so-called
"cult of personality" around himself.
"A message had been learned by the leading politicians of our
country, by the vast majority of our uniformed service members, and the
population at large [that] David Petraeus is a real war hero - maybe
even on the same plane as Patton, MacArthur, and Eisenhower .... But the
most important lesson everyone learned [was to] never, ever question
General Petraeus or you'll be made to look a fool!"
In his report, Davis was scathing in his assessment of US military commanders:
"Senior ranking US military leaders have so distorted the truth when
communicating with the US Congress and American people in regards to
conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become
unrecognisable.
"This deception has damaged America’s credibility among both our
allies and enemies, severely limiting our ability to reach a political
solution to the war in Afghanistan."
globalresearch | The man behind the image was fake. He’s a shadow of how he and spin doctors portrayed him publicly.
Competence didn’t earn him four stars. Former peers accused him of
brown-nosing his way to the top. It made him a brand as much as general.
Talk about him being presidential material surfaced.
In 2007, Time magazine made him runner-up as Person of the Year. The
designation is as meaningless and unworthy as Nobel Peace awards.
So is current and previous praise. John McCain once called him “one
of (our) greatest generals.” His judgment leaves much to be desired.
He’s not the best and brightest on Capitol Hill. He once admitted to graduating near the bottom of his Naval Academy class.
White House and media spin praised Petraeus’ performance as Iraq
commander and CENTCOM head. It was falsified hype. Performance
contradicted facts. Iraq was more disaster than success. His Afghanistan
surge failed. Syria on his CIA watch didn’t fare better.
Before he fell from grace, he was called aggressive in nature, an
innovative thinker on counterinsurgency warfare, a talisman, a white
knight, a do-or-die competitive legend, and a man able to turn defeat
into victory.
In 2008, James Petras described him well in an article titled “General Petraeus: Zionism’s Military Poodle. From Surge to Purge to Dirge.”
He explained what spin doctors concealed. He quoted Petraeus’ former
commander, Admiral William Fallon, calling him “a piece of brown-nosing
chicken shit.” Petras added: “In theory and strategy, in pursuit of defeating the Iraqi
resistance, General Petraeus was a disastrous failure, an outcome
predictable form the very nature of his appointment and his flawed
wartime reputation.”
The generalissimo is more myth than man. He shamelessly supported
Israel “in northern Iraq and the Bush ‘Know Nothings’ in charge of Iraq
and Iran policy planning.”
Petraeus had few competitors to head CENTCOM. It was because other
candidates wouldn’t stoop as low as he did. He shamelessly flacked for
Israel and supported Bush administration belligerence. Petras criticized his “slavish adherence to….confrontation with Iran.
Blaming Iran for his failed military policies served a double purpose –
it covered up his incompetence and it secured the support of” uberhawk
Senator Joe Lieberman.
Doing so also served his unstated presidential ambitions. He climbed
the ladder of success by being super-hawkish, brown-nosing the right
superiors, lying to Congress, surviving the scorn of some peers, hiding
his failures, hyping a fake Iranian threat, supporting Israel,
unjustifiably claiming Iraq success, and boasting how he’d do it
throughout the region.
In other words, he hoped to rise to the top by manufacturing
successes and concealing failures. Manipulated media hype made a hero
out of what Petras called “a disastrous failure” with a record to prove
it.
NYTimes | Along with a steady diet of books on
leadership and management, the reading list at military “charm schools”
that groom officers for ascending to general or admiral includes an
essay, “The Bathsheba Syndrome: The Ethical Failure of Successful
Leaders,” that recalls the moral failure of the Old Testament’s King
David, who ordered a soldier on a mission of certain death — solely for
the chance to take his wife, Bathsheba.
The not-so-subtle message: Be careful out there, and act better.
Despite the warnings, a worrisomely large number of senior officers have
been investigated and even fired for poor judgment, malfeasance and
sexual improprieties or sexual violence — and that is just in the last
year.
Gen. William Ward of the Army, known as Kip, the first officer to open
the new Africa Command, came under scrutiny for allegations of misusing
tens of thousands of government dollars for travel and lodging.
Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair, a former deputy commander of the 82nd
Airborne Division in Afghanistan, is confronting the military equivalent
of a grand jury to decide whether he should stand trial for adultery, sexual misconduct and forcible sodomy, stemming from relationships with five women.
James H. Johnson III, a former commander of the 173rd Airborne Brigade,
was expelled from the Army, fined and reduced in rank to lieutenant
colonel from colonel after being convicted of bigamy and fraud stemming from an improper relationship with an Iraqi woman and business dealings with her family.
The Air Force is struggling to recover from a scandal
at its basic training center at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, where
six male instructors were charged with crimes including rape and
adultery after female recruits told of sexual harassment and sexual
assault.
In the Navy, Rear Adm. Charles M. Gaouette was relieved of command
of the Stennis aircraft carrier strike group — remarkably while the
task force was deployed in the Middle East. Officials said that the move
was ordered after “inappropriate leadership judgment.” No other details
were given.
While there is no evidence that David H. Petraeus
had an extramarital affair while serving as one of the nation’s most
celebrated generals, his resignation last week as director of the Central Intelligence Agency
— a job President Obama said he could take only if he left the Army —
was the latest sobering reminder of the kind of inappropriate behavior
that has cast a shadow over the military’s highest ranks.
The episodes have prompted concern that something may be broken, or at
least fractured, across the military’s culture of leadership. Some
wonder whether its top officers have forgotten the lessons of Bathsheba:
The crown of command should not be worn with arrogance, and while rank
has its privileges, remember that infallibility and entitlement are not
among them.
wired | When it came out that CIA Director David Petraeus had an affair with his hagiographer, I got punked. “It seems so obvious in retrospect. How could you @attackerman?”
tweeted @bitteranagram, complete with a link to a florid piece I wrote
for this blog when Petraeus retired from the Army last year. (“The gold standard for wartime command” is one of the harsher
judgments in the piece.) I was so blind to Petraeus, and my role in the
mythmaking that surrounded his career, that I initially missed
@bitteranagram’s joke.
But it’s a good burn. Like many in the press, nearly every national
politician, and lots of members of Petraeus’ brain trust over the years,
I played a role in the creation of the legend around David Petraeus.
Yes, Paula Broadwell wrote the ultimate Petraeus hagiography, the
now-unfortunately titled All In.
But she was hardly alone (except maybe for the sleeping-with-Petraeus
part). The biggest irony surrounding Petraeus’ unexpected downfall is
that he became a casualty of the very publicity machine he cultivated to
portray him as superhuman. I have some insight into how that machine
worked.
The first time I met Petraeus, he was in what I thought of as a
backwater: the Combined Armed Center at Fort Leavenworth. It’s one of
the Army’s in-house academic institutions, and it’s in Kansas, far from
the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2005, Petraeus ran the
place, and accepted an interview request about his tenure training the
Iraqi military, which didn’t go well.
Petraeus didn’t speak for the record in that interview, but over the
course of an hour, he impressed me greatly with his intelligence and his
willingness to entertain a lot of questions that boiled down to isn’t Iraq an irredeemable shitshow. Back then, most generals would dismiss that line of inquiry out of hand, and that would be the end of the interview.
One of Petraeus’ aides underscored a line that several other members
of the Petraeus brain trust would reiterate for years: “He’s an academic
at heart,” as Pete Mansoor, a retired Army colonel who served as
Petraeus’ executive officer during the Iraq surge, puts it. There was a
purpose to that line: It implied Petraeus wasn’t particularly ambitious,
suggesting he was content at Fort Leavenworth and wasn’t angling for a
bigger job. I bought into it, especially after I found Petraeus to be
the rare general who didn’t mind responding to the occasional follow-up
request.
So when Petraeus got command of the Iraq war in 2007, I blogged that
it was all a tragic shame that President Bush would use Petraeus, “the
wisest general in the U.S. Army,” as a “human shield” for the
irredeemability of the war. And whatever anyone thought about the war,
they should “believe the hype” about Petraeus.
abcnews | Fury is an inadequate description for the former-CIA director's wife,
Holly Petraeus' reaction after she learned that her husband had an
affair with Broadwell, a former spokesman for David Petraeus told ABC
News.
"Well, as you can imagine, she's not exactly pleased right now," retired
U.S. Army Col. Steve Boylan said. "In a conversation with David
Petraeus this weekend, he said that, 'Furious would be an
understatement.' And I think anyone that's been put in that situation
would probably agree. He deeply hurt the family."
As for Petraeus, the retired Army general who resigned as CIA director
last week after admitting the extramarital relationship, he, "first of
all, deeply regrets and knows how much pain this has caused his family,"
Boylan added.
"He had a huge job and he felt he was doing great work and that is all gone now."
Petraeus knows "this was poor judgment on his part. It was a colossal mistake. ... He's acknowledged that," Boylan said.
One result is that Petraeus could possibly face military prosecution
for adultery if officials turn up any evidence to counter his apparent
claims that the affair began after he left the military.
But Boylan says the affair between Petraeus and his biographer, Paula
Broadwell, both of whom are married, began several months after his
retirement from the Army in August 2011 and ended four months ago.
Broadwell, 40, had extraordinary access to the 60-year-old general
during six trips she took to Afghanistan as his official biographer, a
plum assignment for a novice writer.
"For him to allow the very first biography to be written about him, to
be written by someone who had never written a book before, seemed very
odd to me," former Petraeus aide Peter Mansoor told ABC News.
The timeline of the relationship, according to Petraeus, would mean that
he was carrying on the affair for the majority of his tenure at the
CIA, where he began as director Sept. 6, 2011. If he carried on the
affair while serving in the Army, however, Petraeus could face charges,
according to Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which
reprimands conduct "of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed
forces."
Whether the military would pursue such action, whatever evidence it accumulates, is unclear.
kunstler | The Birchers retailed all kinds of ideological nonsense that made
them the butt of ridicule during the Camelot days of John F. Kennedy and
the heady Civil Rights years of his successor Lyndon B. Johnson. (Bob
Dylan wrote a song about them in 1962: "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid
Blues.") Everything perceived to be a threat in a changing society was
sold by the Birchers as a communist plot - water fluoridation,
de-segregation, even, by a kind of tortured logic, the US strategy in
the Vietnam War. Since a Democratic president and congress passed the
civil rights legislation of 1964-5, the traditionally Democratic "solid
South" revolted almost overnight and eventually turned solidly
Republican. (It was also good for business.)
Something
else was going on in Dixieland from the late 1950s on. The region boomed
economically, partly from luring northern industry down with cheap
labor, and partly because so many large military bases were located
there - hence the hyperbolic, militant patriotism of a region that had
lately staged a violent insurrection against the national government.
The region also went through an explosion of air-conditioned suburban
sprawl because the southern states were geographically huge and the
climate was unbearable half the year. The sprawl industry itself
generated vast fortunes and widespread prosperity in a part of the
country that had been a depressed agricultural backwater since the Civil
War.
Consequently, a population of poor, ignorant
crackers crawled out of the mud and dust to find themselves wealthy car
dealers and strip-mall magnates in barely one turn of a generation. The
transition being so abrupt, their cracker culture of xenophobia,
"primitive" religion, and romance with violence came through intact.
They were the perfect client group for a political party that styled
itself "conservative," as in maintaining the old timey ways. Toward the
end of the 20th century, as the old northern states' economies withered,
and Yankee culture lost both footing and meaning, and poor white folks
all over America looked with envy on the glitz of country music and
Nascar, and gravitated toward the Dixieland culture of belligerent,
aggressive suburbanization, religiosity, and militarism. This cartoon of
the old timey ways swept the "flyover" precincts of the nation. Along
in the baggage compartment was all the old John Birch Society cargo of
quasi-supernatural ideology that appealed so deeply to people perplexed
by the mystifying operations of reality. That perplexity was supposedly
resolved in a Bush II White House aide famously stating, "We make our
own reality." The results of the 2012 election now conclusively
demonstrate the shortcomings of that world-view.
And so
the news last week was that a different version of America outvoted the
John Birch Dixiecrat coalition by roughly two million ballots. Meaning,
of course, that there are still a lot of dangerous morons out there, but
also that the times they are yet a'changin' again. Fist tap Dale.
NYTimes | IT makes sense that Mitt Romney and his advisers are still gobsmacked by
the fact that they’re not commandeering the West Wing.
(Though, as “The Daily Show” correspondent John Oliver jested, the White
House might have been one of the smaller houses Romney ever lived in.)
Team Romney has every reason to be shellshocked. Its candidate, after
all, resoundingly won the election of the country he was wooing.
Mitt Romney is the president of white male America.
Maybe the group can retreat to a man cave in a Whiter House, with
mahogany paneling, brown leather Chesterfields, a moose head over the
fireplace, an elevator for the presidential limo, and one of those men’s
club signs on the phone that reads: “Telephone Tips: ‘Just Left,’ 25
cents; ‘On His Way,’ 50 cents; ‘Not here,’ $1; ‘Who?’ $5.”
In its delusional death spiral, the white male patriarchy was so hard
core, so redolent of country clubs and Cadillacs, it made little effort
not to alienate women. The election had the largest gender gap in the
history of the Gallup poll, with Obama winning the vote of single women
by 36 percentage points.
As W.’s former aide Karen Hughes put it in Politico on Friday, “If
another Republican man says anything about rape other than it is a
horrific, violent crime, I want to personally cut out his tongue.”
Some Republicans conceded they were “a ‘Mad Men’ party in a ‘Modern
Family’ world” (although “Mad Men” seems too louche for a candidate who
doesn’t drink or smoke and who apparently dated only one woman). They
also acknowledged that Romney’s strategists ran a 20th-century campaign
against David Plouffe’s 21st-century one.
But the truth is, Romney was an unpalatable candidate. And shocking as
it may seem, his strategists weren’t blowing smoke when they said they
were going to win; they were just clueless.
Until now, Republicans and Fox News have excelled at conjuring alternate
realities. But this time, they made the mistake of believing their fake
world actually existed. As Fox’s Megyn Kelly said to Karl Rove on
election night, when he argued against calling Ohio for Obama: “Is this
just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better?”
Romney and Tea Party loonies dismissed half the country as chattel and
moochers who did not belong in their “traditional” America. But the more
they insulted the president with birther cracks, the more they tried to
force chastity belts on women, and the more they made Hispanics, blacks
and gays feel like the help, the more these groups burned to prove
that, knitted together, they could give the dead-enders of white male
domination the boot.
The election about the economy also sounded the death knell for the Republican culture wars.
Romney was still running in an illusory country where husbands told
wives how to vote, and the wives who worked had better get home in time
to cook dinner. But in the real country, many wives were urging husbands
not to vote for a Brylcreemed boss out of a ’50s boardroom whose party
was helping to revive a 50-year-old debate over contraception.
theatlantic | The day after Barack Obama won a second term as president of the United States, the blog Jezebel published a slideshow. The gallery displayed a collection of screen-capped tweets.
There were, both shockingly and unsurprisingly, many more where that
came from. And many of those tweets were geocoded: Embedded in them were
data about where in the U.S. they were sent from.
Floating Sheep, a group of geography academics, took advantage of that fact
to turn hatred -- and, just as often, stupidity -- into information.
The team searched Twitter for racism-revealing terms that appeared in
the context of tweets that mentioned "Obama," "re-elected," or "won."
That search resulted in (a shockingly high and surprisingly low) 395
tweets. The team then sorted the tweets according to the state they were
sent from, comparing the racist tweets to the total number of geocoded
tweets coming from that state during the same time period (November 1 -
7). To normalize states across population levels, the team then used a location quotient-inspired measure --
an economic derivation used to analyze norms across geographical
locations -- to compare a state's racist tweets to the national average
of racist tweets.
So, per the team's model, a score of 1.0
indicates that the state's proportion of racist tweets to non-racist
tweets is the same as the overall national proportion. A score above 1.0
indicates that the proportion of racist tweets to non-racist tweets is
higher than the national proportion.
Here's the LQ formula the team used:
Their findings?
Alabama and Mississippi have the highest LQ measures: They have
scores of 8.1 and 7.4, respectively. And the states surrounding these
two core states -- Georgia, Louisiana, and Tennessee -- also have very
high LQ scores and form a fairly distinctive cluster in the southeast. Fist tap Dale.
skepticblog | Hearing the speakers at the GOP convention spout their ideas this
week, I’m again reminded that an entire American political party is
proudly and openly espousing views that are demonstrably contrary to
reality, from claiming that rape does not cause pregnancy, to claiming
that global climate change is a hoax, to even weirder idea, like the
bizarre notion that the President of the United States is a Kenyan
Muslim. For years, I’ve puzzled over why people can believe such weird
things as creationism or other kinds of pseudoscience and science
denials. In my 2007 book Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters,
I devoted an entire chapter to asking why creationists can so
confidently believe patently false ideas, and refuse to look at any
evidence placed in front of them. I’ve compared it to Alice’s Adventures Through the Looking Glass,
where Alice steps through the mirror and finds that the objects and the
landscape look vaguely familiar—but all the rules of logic are reversed
or turned inside out. How can people continue to believe things that
are clearly wrong, and refuse to change their ideas or look at evidence?
It turns out that human brains are constructed very differently than
what we would like to believe. As described by Chris Mooney (2012) in The Republican Brain: The Science of Why they Deny Science—and Reality,
our brains are not logical computers or non-emotional Vulcans like Dr.
Spock, but organs in emotional animals who navigate the factual world to
fit our beliefs and biases. Mooney explains this by starting with an
anecdote about the Marquis de Condorcet, an important figure in the
French Enlightenment (he helped develop both integral calculus and also
wrote many important works on politics and philosophy). Condorcet
believed in the Enlightenment ideal that humans would always be rational
and guided by reason, and persuaded if logic and evidence were
considered—and lost his life in 1794 during the irrational, emotional,
highly political Reign of Terror. Even though Enlightenment philosophy
and political science long argued that humans are rational animals,
modern psychology and neurobiology have shown this is not the case.
Humans filter the world to see what fits their emotional and cultural
biases, and easily neglect evidence and information that does not fit
(confirmation bias). Even more to the point, we are prone to what
psychologists now call motivated reasoning—confirmation bias, reduction of cognitive dissonance, shifting the goalposts, ad hoc
rationalization to salvage falsified beliefs, plus other mental tricks
cause us to constantly filter the world. Our minds do not behave by
objectively weighing all the evidence and listening to reason, but
instead acts as if we were lawyers seeking evidence to bolster our
pre-existing beliefs. Instead of the Enlightenment ideal that humans
would change their minds when the facts go against them, motivated
reasoning explains why humans are adept at bending or ignoring facts to
fit the world as we want to see it.
wikipedia | Neofeudalism is made possible by the commodification of policing, and signifies the end of shared citizenship, says Ian Loader:
The commodification of policing ... also has to do
with the ways in which private policing and security can assist in the
creation of commercial or residential spaces in which an exclusive,
particularistic order comes to be defined and enforced. The warm,
sanitised, consumer-friendly realm offered by shopping malls represents
an important instance of the former. In contradistinction to the
unpredictable, democratic ‘messiness’ of urban streets, malls make
systematic use of private patrols and camera surveillance to create what
Coleman and Sim call a moral order of consumption; something which
entails the exclusion (on grounds of property, rather than criminal,
law) of those ‘flawed consumers’ who are unwilling or unable to be
seduced by the market. In respect of the latter, walled, gated,
privately policed enclaves — currently most evident in Southern
California and elsewhere in the United States, though also apparent (in
embryonic forms) in parts of Britain — serve as a means of physical
protection, and a vehicle for protecting the value of economic capital;
both of which are predicated on the essential ‘unliveability’ of civil
society beyond the walls. As such, the commodification of policing and
security operates to cement (sometimes literally) and exacerbate social
and spatial inequalities generated elsewhere; serving to project,
anticipate and bring forth a tribalised, 'neo-feudal’ world of private
orders in which social cohesion and common citizenship have collapsed.
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"On this sacred day of Michaelmas, former President Donald Trump invoked
the heavenly power of St. Michael the Archangel, sharing a powerful prayer
for pro...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
