the purported past and future of america's social contract...,

theatlantic | The low-wage social contract seeks to balance poor private sector pay with cheap consumer goods, low taxes, and government subsidies that boost after-tax incomes. What does this mean in practice? Cheap imports from countries like China are one big part of it, as are policies like the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit that allow Washington to supplement low-income workers’ pay through the tax code.

Proponents of the low-wage social contract on both the left and the right have argued that the combination of inexpensive goods and low taxes should give consumers more spending power than they would have in a high-wage, high-price economy. In a famous paper entitled “Wal-Mart: A Progressive Success Story,” Jason Furman, now Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, argued that the low-wage model actually made low-income consumers better off overall.

For many, though, the bargain has clearly failed. It is true that tax credits and cheap goods have boosted the standard of living for otherwise impoverished workers. Yet, according to the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which takes into account wage subsidies and additional costs like taxes and medical costs, almost 10 percent of the total working population still lives in poverty. This includes roughly 5 million Americans who work full-time, year-round. 

A key reason for this is that the low-wage social contract does not do much to help families in the areas they need most. Clothing, food, and other items found at Wal-Mart might be cheap for low-wage workers. But other necessary services—health care, daycare, eldercare, and college—have simultaneously become less affordable and more important as most mothers work outside of the home and the wage premium for college remains high. In 1960, the average family spent about $12,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars on childcare, education, and healthcare over the course of 17 years raising a child. Four decades later, the average family spends almost $63,000 per child. Medical out-of-pocket expenses now push more people below the poverty line than tax credits can lift above it.

The low-wage social contract has also contributed to a lack of aggregate demand.  Because workers are also consumers, and because low-income households spend more of their money than do wealthier households, the low wage system limits the power of workers to help the economy grow by purchasing goods and services.

The Next Social Contract

That’s how we got here—but what might lie ahead?

While the “low wage” social contract may not be much of a bargain for many workers, there’s no pretending we can go back to the New Deal-era system of old. The combination of conditions that allowed for high wages, high profits, and low prices no longer exists in a service-based economy with more unstable employment and in which the declining number of manufacturing jobs are more subject to global competition. And while the welfare capitalist model did benefit many in the middle class, it often excluded African-American workers and was reliant on a family model based on a sole male breadwinner. The next social contract needs to adapt to these new economic conditions and further the huge strides we have made toward equality for women and minorities in the workforce.

What, then, would a better social contract look like?

criticizing the cathedral and the coronation of the cathedral's dynastic candidate...,

cnn | Brian Schweitzer, a former Montana governor and self-styled prairie populist who wants to be part of the Democratic presidential conversation for 2016, drew a bright line between himself and presumed frontrunner Hillary Clinton on Wednesday by raising an topic that has largely faded from the political spotlight amid rising economic anxiety: the Iraq War.

In a speech to Iowa Democrats in the Des Moines suburb of Altoona, and in remarks to reporters, Schweitzer repeatedly chided Senate Democrats who voted in 2002 to green light military action in Iraq.

Clinton, then a senator from New York, voted to authorize the use of military force in Iraq, a decision that badly damaged her credibility with the Democratic base and allowed Barack Obama to win over anti-war liberals in their 2008 nomination fight.

“Anybody who runs in this cycle, whether they are Democrats or Republicans, if they were the United States Senate and they voted with George Bush to go to Iraq when I would say about 98 percent of America knows that it was a folly, that it was a waste of treasure and blood,
and if they voted to go to Iraq there will be questions for them on the left and from the right,” he told CNN.

Later, in his remarks to a holiday party organized by the liberal group Progress Iowa, Schweitzer asked the roughly 70 audience members to keep the Iraq war vote in mind as they begin to think about potential candidates passing through the state.

“When George Bush got a bunch of Dems to vote for that war, I was just shaking my head in Montana,” he said, noting that he opposed the war (though he didn’t have to vote on it). “I’m asking you to pick the leaders who aren’t going to make those mistakes.”

Schweitzer was reluctant to mention the former Secretary of State by name, but the target of his comments, delivered in the first-in-the-nation caucus state that derailed Clinton’s candidacy almost six years ago, was unmistakable.

In recent interviews, with The Weekly Standard and RealClearPolitics, he has urged Democrats not to give Clinton a free pass to the nomination in 2016. And asked after the speech who he had in mind when raising the Iraq issue, Schweitzer said “presidential candidates.”

Schweitzer, though, insisted he wasn’t attacking the presumed frontrunner.

“The point is that this is an election not a coronation,” Schweitzer said. “It’s been a long time since we have had coronations in his country. Democrats are always excited about tomorrow and we always want to know what the future is. We don’t want to talk about the past.

We want to talk about the future. We want to know that the people that we elect will move America forward, not move us in reverse.”

To observers of his sometimes-haphazard speech, which also touched on education and prison reform, along with transparently folksy Midwestern nods to cattle and 4H, his Iraq observations seemed somewhat dated.

“Are you tweeting from 2004?” one Twitter user wrote to a reporter covering the speech.

“The foreign policy stuff was good,” said Matt Sinovic, the director of Progress Iowa. “It was good, just unexpected.”

i love it that an indian u.s. attorney is at the center of this indian runaway slave "crisis"

foxnews | U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who made the highly unusual move Wednesday of issuing a lengthy statement addressing the arrest and issues not in a criminal complaint, said diplomat Devyani Khobragade was afforded courtesies most Americans wouldn't get — such as being allowed to make phone calls for two hours to arrange child care and sort out personal matters — after she was discreetly arrested by State Department agents outside her children's Manhattan school.

Khobragade was arrested last week on charges she lied on a visa application about how much she paid her housekeeper, an Indian national. Prosecutors say the maid received less than $3 per hour for her work.

Bharara said Khobragade, who has pleaded not guilty, wasn't handcuffed, restrained or arrested in front of her children. And he said that while she was "fully searched" in private by a female deputy marshal, the move was a standard safety practice all defendants undergo.

Khobragade has been transferred to India's mission to the United Nations, according to her lawyer and a former colleague. It's unclear how such a move might affect her immunity from prosecution, and a U.N. spokesman said it hadn't received a necessary transfer request from her Wednesday evening.

External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid told reporters on Thursday that Khobragade should never have been arrested, and that the housekeeper should have been arrested instead.

Khurshid said he would speak to Kerry later Thursday.

"This is an extremely distressing and hurtful incident that needs to be addressed," he said.

Earlier Thursday, an official in India's External Affairs Ministry told the Associated Press that Khobragade claimed to Indian authorities in July that the maid had disappeared and was trying to blackmail her. According to the official, the housekeeper said she would not report Khobragade if she agreed to pay her more money and change her visa status to allow her to work elsewhere in the U.S.

Khobragade filed a complaint with New York police and New Delhi police, the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly. It was not clear what action was taken in the U.S., but New Delhi police issued a warrant for her arrest if she returned to India.

News that Khobragade was strip-searched has chilled U.S.-Indian relations, and Kerry called India's national security adviser on Wednesday to express his regret over what happened. India has revoked privileges for U.S. diplomats in protest.

Bharara, who was born in India but moved with his family to New Jersey, defended his case.

modi an'em fitna go in on teh gey in the u.s. diplomatic corps...,

Time | But the fallout did not end with expressions of umbrage. Bulldozers removed security barriers outside the U.S. embassy in New Delhi, and U.S. diplomats and their families are being stripped of ID cards that make clearances easier. “We will deal with them exactly the same way they are dealing with us. Not anything more, not anything less,” Ravi Shankar Prasad, leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, told reporters. “While the U.S. doesn’t provide many courtesies to our diplomats, we go out of the way not to withhold those facilities.”

Political leaders from both the ruling and opposition parties refused to meet with an American congressional delegation visiting Delhi this week; Narendra Modi, the BJP’s candidate for Prime Minister, explained his snub on Twitter, saying he “refused to meet the visiting USA delegation in solidarity with our nation, protesting ill-treatment meted to our lady diplomat in USA.”

Khobragade’s arrest is certainly not the first time American legal procedures have sparked outrage in the home country of a prominent international figure. In May 2011, when then International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested in New York City on charges of sexually assaulting a hotel maid, he was marched into the police precinct in handcuffs before an assembled bank of photographers. The so-called perp walk, which is standard fare in the U.S., caused outrage in Strauss-Kahn’s native France. Indeed, two years after the charges against him were dropped and he returned to France, Strauss-Kahn said he was still angry at his treatment while in custody. It also stands in stark contrast to the measures the U.S. itself often uses when its diplomats and government employees run afoul of the law overseas.

In Washington, a State Department spokeswoman said that the diplomatic security team that arrested Khobragade followed standard procedures and turned her over to the U.S. Marshals for processing. If the Strauss-Kahn incident is any indication, Khobragade isn’t likely to get any apologies from local authorities. The American process of law and order has sparked outrage before; the only question in this case is how long this diplomatic row will continue between two countries that have an important relationship.

india's 1% demands respect and indian peasants stuck in their shoe-treads protest indignities ...,

outlookindia | Is it a house or a home? A temple to the new India, or a warehouse for its ghosts? Ever since Antilla arrived on Altamont Road in Mumbai, exuding mystery and quiet menace, things have not been the same. “Here we are,” the friend who took me there said, “Pay your respects to our new Ruler.”

Antilla belongs to India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani. I had read about this most expensive dwelling ever built, the twenty-seven floors, three helipads, nine lifts, hanging gardens, ballrooms, weather rooms, gymnasiums, six floors of parking, and the six hundred servants. Nothing had prepared me for the vertical lawn—a soaring, 27-storey-high wall of grass attached to a vast metal grid. The grass was dry in patches; bits had fallen off in neat rectangles. Clearly, Trickledown hadn’t worked.

But Gush-Up certainly has. That’s why in a nation of 1.2 billion, India’s 100 richest people own assets equivalent to one-fourth of the GDP.

The word on the street (and in the New York Times) is, or at least was, that after all that effort and gardening, the Ambanis don’t live in Antilla. No one knows for sure. People still whisper about ghosts and bad luck, Vaastu and Feng Shui. Maybe it’s all Karl Marx’s fault. (All that cussing.) Capitalism, he said, “has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, that it is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells”.

In India, the 300 million of us who belong to the new, post-IMF “reforms” middle class—the market—live side by side with spirits of the nether world, the poltergeists of dead rivers, dry wells, bald mountains and denuded forests; the ghosts of 2,50,000 debt-ridden farmers who have killed themselves, and of the 800 million who have been impoverished and dispossessed to make way for us. And who survive on less than twenty rupees a day.

Mukesh Ambani is personally worth $20 billion. He holds a majority controlling share in Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), a company with a market capitalisation of $47 billion and global business interests that include petrochemicals, oil, natural gas, polyester fibre, Special Economic Zones, fresh food retail, high schools, life sciences research and stem cell storage services. RIL recently bought 95 per cent shares in Infotel, a TV consortium that controls 27 TV news and entertainment channels, including CNN-IBN, IBN Live, CNBC, IBN Lokmat, and ETV in almost every regional language. Infotel owns the only nationwide licence for 4G Broadband, a high-speed “information pipeline” which, if the technology works, could be the future of information exchange. Mr Ambani also owns a cricket team.

RIL is one of a handful of corporations that run India. Some of the others are the Tatas, Jindals, Vedanta, Mittals, Infosys, Essar and the other Reliance (ADAG), owned by Mukesh’s brother Anil. Their race for growth has spilled across Europe, Central Asia, Africa and Latin America. Their nets are cast wide; they are visible and invisible, over-ground as well as underground.

The Tatas, for example, run more than 100 companies in 80 countries. They are one of India’s oldest and largest private sector power companies. They own mines, gas fields, steel plants, telephone, cable TV and broadband networks, and run whole townships. They manufacture cars and trucks, own the Taj Hotel chain, Jaguar, Land Rover, Daewoo, Tetley Tea, a publishing company, a chain of bookstores, a major brand of iodised salt and the cosmetics giant Lakme. Their advertising tagline could easily be: You Can’t Live Without Us.

According to the rules of the Gush-Up Gospel, the more you have, the more you can have.

The era of the Privatisation of Everything has made the Indian economy one of the fastest growing in the world. However, like any good old-fashioned colony, one of its main exports is its minerals. India’s new mega-corporations—Tatas, Jindals, Essar, Reliance, Sterlite—are those who have managed to muscle their way to the head of the spigot that is spewing money extracted from deep inside the earth. It’s a dream come true for businessmen—to be able to sell what they don’t have to buy. Fist tap Bro. Makheru.

us-india row ignores short-changed domestic worker...,

hrw | Despite wide coverage of the case in India, there has been little public outrage or shame that Devyani Khobragade, India’s deputy consul general in New York, who has championed women’s rights in other settings, allegedly paid her domestic worker a fraction of New York’s legal minimum wage.

Instead, many commentators have leapt to Khobragade’s defense, saying she could not be expected to pay her nanny US$4,500 per month, more than her Indian government salary. But no one has a right to a domestic worker. Yes, child care options in the US need to be expanded. But if you cannot afford to pay your nanny, you shouldn’t hire one.

In India the outrage has been over how New York City authorities treated Khobragade upon arrest for alleged visa fraud, handcuffing her outside her children’s school and reportedly strip-searching her. Indians across the political spectrum have expressed anger, viewing this as an insult to national pride. The Indian foreign secretary met with the US ambassador in Delhi to complain, and top officials have canceled meetings with a visiting US congressional delegation.

The common practice in the US of strip-searching people who the police take into custody raises important human rights questions about treating individuals with dignity and respecting their privacy.

But other human rights issues at hand – the allegations that Khobragade took advantage of her domestic worker – remain.

Human Rights Watch has documented exploitation of domestic workers around the world. They often face underpayment and long working hours with little hope of redress. Diplomats from many countries who abuse their workers have often used their status to skirt the law.

india, women's rights, and wages - all in one lying hypocritical package...,

gawker | An Indian diplomat who championed women's rights is being criminally charged in New York for paying her female nanny $3.31 an hour and lying about it on the woman's visa application.

Devyani Khobragade, India's deputy consul general for political, economic, commercial and women’s affairs, was arrested and handcuffed this week as she dropped her daughter off at a Manhattan school.

Although Khobragade was actually the acting head of the consulate at the time of her arrest, the United States is denying diplomatic immunity, saying that visa fraud isn't covered under the Vienna convention. 

In addition to the women's affairs part of her job title, Khobragade has repeatedly put herself out in the press as an advocate for “underprivileged” women’s rights.

According to the US Attorney's office, however, Khobragade was doing the opposite at home. Authorities say she helped her nanny fill out fake visa forms which said Khobragade was paying her $4,500 per month, or $3,927 a month more than the woman's actual $3.31-an-hour salary, which they documented in a secret contract.

Khobragade's nanny and husband will both be called as witnesses if the case proceeds to trial.

The arrest has caused diplomatic stir. India's Foreign Secretary has called on the US Ambassador to India to speak out against Khobragade's arrest. Khobragade's attorney is calling it political.

“I don’t know. I think there must be some political motivation, but I don’t know,” Daniel Arshack told CBS.

Khobragade was freed on a $250,000 bail. She's facing up to 15 years for fraud and making false statements.

an awkward silence...,

medialens | 'All governments lie', the US journalist I.F. Stone once noted, with Iraq the most blatant example in modern times. But Syria is another recent criminal example of Stone's dictum.

An article in the current edition of London Review of Books by Seymour Hersh makes a strong case that US President Obama misled the world over the infamous chemical weapons attack near Damascus on August 21 this year. Hersh is the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who exposed the My Lai atrocity committed by American troops in Vietnam and the subsequent cover-up. He also helped bring to public attention the systematic brutality of US soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

After the nerve gas attack at Ghouta, Obama had unequivocally pinned the blame on Syrian President Assad, a propaganda claim that was fervently disseminated around the world by a compliant corporate news media. Following Obama's earlier warnings that any use of chemical weapons would cross a 'red line', he then declared on US television on September 10, 2013:

'Assad's government gassed to death over a thousand people ...We know the Assad regime was responsible ... And that is why, after careful deliberation, I determined that it is in the national security interests of the United States to respond to the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons through a targeted military strike.'

There was global public opposition to any attack on Syria. But war was only averted when the Americans agreed to a Russian proposal at the UN to dismantle Syria's capability for making chemical weapons.

Based on interviews with US intelligence and military insiders, Hersh now charges that Obama deceived the world in making a cynical case for war. The US president 'did not tell the whole story', says the journalist:

'In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country's civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack.'

Obama did not reveal that American intelligence agencies knew that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had the capability to manufacture considerable quantities of sarin. When the attack on Ghouta took place, 'al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.' Indeed, the 'cherry-picking was similar to the process used to justify the Iraq war.'

Hersh notes that when he interviewed intelligence and military personnel:

'I found intense concern, and on occasion anger, over what was repeatedly seen as the deliberate manipulation of intelligence. One high-level intelligence officer, in an email to a colleague, called the administration's assurances of Assad's responsibility a "ruse".'

whose sarin?

lrb | Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack. In the months before the attack, the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports, culminating in a formal Operations Order – a planning document that precedes a ground invasion – citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity. When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.

In his nationally televised speech about Syria on 10 September, Obama laid the blame for the nerve gas attack on the rebel-held suburb of Eastern Ghouta firmly on Assad’s government, and made it clear he was prepared to back up his earlier public warnings that any use of chemical weapons would cross a ‘red line’: ‘Assad’s government gassed to death over a thousand people,’ he said. ‘We know the Assad regime was responsible … And that is why, after careful deliberation, I determined that it is in the national security interests of the United States to respond to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons through a targeted military strike.’ Obama was going to war to back up a public threat, but he was doing so without knowing for sure who did what in the early morning of 21 August.

the lion of gujarat keeps his powder dry on teh gey...,

deccanchronicle | Why did Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi offer no comment on the Supreme Court order making homosexual love a criminal activity again?

Modi is usually quick to climb into an issue and offer his opinion. The issue was, and remains, one of the most debated matters on television. News-papers have been scathing in their editorial criticism of the judgment. The Congress’ leaders spoke out unequivocally in favour of human rights, but there was no word from Modi on this subject.

This is not to say that he has been silent generally, because he hasn’t. He had a thing or two to say (later proved to be false) about how Kashmiri law constitutionally discriminates against its female residents.

He remains pretty active on Twitter and in the same period as the judgement he tweeted to wish various people a happy birthday, including Sonia Gandhi, Sharad Pawar, Pranab Mukherjee and even Rajinikanth. But there was nothing on this important constitutional issue.

To be fair, there was nothing from the rest of the BJP for most of the week either. Party chief Rajnath Singh’s terse statement backing the court on Saturday shows us this is the sort of issue that the Hindutvawadis find distasteful and would rather stay away from. But Modi is the man running for the office of Prime Minister. Why is he silent?

It would have been a good opportunity for him to have shown his more liberal values without damaging his Hindutva, anti-Muslim side. He would not have put off any large part of his constituency if he had said a few words in sympathy to the gay community. He chose not to. So why not?

The fact is that he does have an opinion on this, but it runs counter to the media consensus. The media is liberal and was incensed at the order, saying it was a setback to individual rights and a clinging on to the code imposed by colonialists.

Modi is from the old school of morality and doesn’t like the idea of homosexuals, much less making their activity legal. If he were absolutely pressed to weigh in on the subject, he would say that he agreed with the law and the judgement.

But it would have been politically damaging for him to say this, because the attention of the media would turn to the only person swimming against the consensus. This is why he chose to remain silent instead.

This will disappoint those supporters of Modi who have chosen to vote for him based on his non-Hindutva credentials. But it must be recognised that for Modi, his politics and his beliefs are something deeply held.

Attempts to pick and choose some of his aspects and try and imagine him as a new person will always come to grief. Modi is what he has always said he is: a worker of the Rashtriya Swa-yamsevak Sangh, whose ideas are moulded by that body.

ashy medieval help getting out of pocket...,

LATimes | Indian media reported Tuesday that India has retaliated by summoning U.S. Ambassador Nancy Powell and withdrawing all airport passes for U.S. consulate and embassy vehicles, effectively removing their priority treatment and free parking.

It has also asked the U.S to provide information on the salaries paid to all Indian staff employed at U.S. missions in India and those working as domestic help for American families.

It has removed security from around the U.S. Embassy in the leafy Chanakyapuri district of New Delhi. India has also reportedly asked for the visa and bank account details of all teachers working at U.S. schools in the country to determine whether they’re paying tax or not.

And on Tuesday, several senior government ministers and top politicians -- including Narendra Modi, the prime ministerial candidate for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, and Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family leading India's ruling Congress Party -- refused to meet a visiting Congressional delegation.

Members of the delegation included representatives George Holding (R-N.C.), Pete Olson (R-Texas), David Schweikert (R- Ariz.), Robert Woodall (R-Ga.) and Madeleine Bordallo (D-Guam).

The kerfuffle comes in advance of a general election expected early next year. Analysts said India’s government, which has presided over several massive scandals and a weak economy, is wary of being accused of lacking patriotism or going soft on foreign policy.

"We are shocked and appalled at the manner in which she has been humiliated by the U.S. authorities,” said Syed Akabaruddin, foreign ministry spokesman, at a briefing Friday. "We are also reiterating, in no uncertain terms, to the U.S. Embassy here that this kind of treatment to one of our diplomats is absolutely unacceptable."

Analysts said the incident underscored anti-American sentiment that is sometimes just below the surface.

“I haven’t been able to understand how people in New York behaved the way they did,” said K. Shankar Bajpai, an analyst with the Delhi Policy Group think tank and a former Indian ambassador to the U.S. “It doesn’t take much to arouse anti-Americanism. It’ll obviously leave a bad taste.”

brahmina's $3.00/hr illegally smuggled peasant nanny forgotten in the infuriated 1% dust-up

IndianExpress | Political parties expressed outrage over the "shameful and barbaric" treatment meted out to Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade in New York and asked the government to take every step matching US action till it gives an unconditional apology.

"The incidents should be condemned by all. More steps should be taken till the US gives an unconditional apology," Union Minister and Congress leader Kamal Nath said as India announced a slew of measures curtailing privileges of US diplomats here. 

"India should take the lead in sending a message to the US authorities," he said. 

Main opposition BJP asked the government to take up the matter strongly with the American establishment and even demanded arrest of American gay partners in India. 

"The way she was arrested after being handcuffed, kept with drug addicts and strip-searched in the police station, that is condemnable, reprehensible and regrettable and in clear violation of conventions," BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said. 

Taking a dig at the UPA government, he said that the treatment given to the Indian diplomat by the US "does not accord to the level of friendship that the Indian government claims to have with the US". 

"We would urge the Indian government, which tries to match each and every step of the US, to take serious action in this matter to establish the Indian sovereignty and prestige of its diplomatic community," he said. 

Reacting sharply to the arrest of the diplomat, former External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha said the government should hit back by punishing same sex companions of US diplomats in India following the Supreme Court ruling on gay sex.

never say anything suddenly got a whole lot to say

cbsnews | No U.S. intelligence agency has ever been under the kind of pressure being faced by the National Security Agency after details of some of its most secret programs were leaked by contractor Edward Snowden. Perhaps because of that pressure the agency gave 60 Minutes unprecedented access to NSA headquarters where we were able to speak to employees who have never spoken publicly before.

Full disclosure, I once worked in the office of the director of National Intelligence where I saw firsthand how secretly the NSA operates. It is often said NSA stands for "never say anything," but tonight the agency breaks with that tradition to address serious questions about whether the NSA delves too far into the lives of Americans.

Gen. Keith Alexander: The fact is, we're not collecting everybody's email, we're not collecting everybody's phone things, we're not listening to that. Our job is foreign intelligence and we're very good at that.

The man in charge is Keith Alexander, a four-star Army general who leads the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command.  

John Miller: There is a perception out there that the NSA is widely collecting the content of the phone calls of Americans. Is that true?

your tax dollars at work...,

NYTimes | Not limiting their activities to the earthly realm, American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents. 

Fearing that terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly, move money or plot attacks, the documents show, intelligence operatives have entered terrain populated by digital avatars that include elves, gnomes and supermodels. 

The spies have created make-believe characters to snoop and to try to recruit informers, while also collecting data and contents of communications between players, according to the documents, disclosed by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. Because militants often rely on features common to video games — fake identities, voice and text chats, a way to conduct financial transactions — American and British intelligence agencies worried that they might be operating there, according to the papers. 

Online games might seem innocuous, a top-secret 2008 N.S.A. document warned, but they had the potential to be a “target-rich communication network” allowing intelligence suspects “a way to hide in plain sight.” Virtual games “are an opportunity!” another 2008 N.S.A. document declared.

But for all their enthusiasm — so many C.I.A., F.B.I. and Pentagon spies were hunting around in Second Life, the document noted, that a “deconfliction” group was needed to avoid collisions — the intelligence agencies may have inflated the threat. 

The documents, obtained by The Guardian and shared with The New York Times and ProPublica, do not cite any counterterrorism successes from the effort. Former American intelligence officials, current and former gaming company employees and outside experts said in interviews that they knew of little evidence that terrorist groups viewed the games as havens to communicate and plot operations. 

Games “are built and operated by companies looking to make money, so the players’ identity and activity is tracked,” said Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution, an author of “Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know.” “For terror groups looking to keep their communications secret, there are far more effective and easier ways to do so than putting on a troll avatar.” 

The surveillance, which also included Microsoft’s Xbox Live, could raise privacy concerns. It is not clear exactly how the agencies got access to gamers’ data or communications, how many players may have been monitored or whether Americans’ communications or activities were captured. 

One American company, the maker of World of Warcraft, said that neither the N.S.A. nor its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters, had gotten permission to gather intelligence in its game. Many players are Americans, who can be targeted for surveillance only with approval from the nation’s secret intelligence court. The spy agencies, though, face far fewer restrictions on collecting certain data or communications overseas. 

"We are unaware of any surveillance taking place," said a spokesman for Blizzard Entertainment, based in Irvine, Calif., which makes World of Warcraft. "If it was, it would have been done without our knowledge or permission."  

A spokeswoman for Microsoft declined to comment. Philip Rosedale, the founder of Second Life and a former chief executive officer of Linden Lab, the game’s maker, declined to comment on the spying revelations. Current Linden executives did not respond to requests for comment. 

A Government Communications Headquarters spokesman would neither confirm nor deny any involvement by that agency in gaming surveillance, but said that its work is conducted under “a strict legal and policy framework” with rigorous oversight. An N.S.A. spokeswoman declined to comment.

Intelligence and law enforcement officials became interested in games after some became enormously popular, drawing tens of millions of people worldwide, from preteens to retirees. The games rely on lifelike graphics, virtual currencies and the ability to speak to other players in real time. Some gamers merge the virtual and real worlds by spending long hours playing and making close online friends. 

In World of Warcraft, players share the same fantasy universe — walking around and killing computer-controlled monsters or the avatars of other players, including elves, animals or creatures known as orcs. In Second Life, players create customized human avatars that can resemble themselves or take on other personas — supermodels and bodybuilders are popular — who can socialize, buy and sell virtual goods, and go places like beaches, cities, art galleries and strip clubs. In Microsoft’s Xbox Live service, subscribers connect online in games that can involve activities like playing soccer or shooting at each other in space. 

According to American officials and the documents, spy agencies grew worried that terrorist groups might take to the virtual worlds to establish safe communications channels.

in math and science, the best fend for themselves...,

NYTimes | In a post-smokestack age, there is only one way for the United States to avoid a declining standard of living, and that is through innovation. Advancements in science and engineering have extended life, employed millions and accounted for more than half of American economic growth since World War II, but they are slowing. The nation has to enlarge its pool of the best and brightest science and math students and encourage them to pursue careers that will keep the country competitive. 

But that isn’t happening. Not only do average American students perform poorly compared with those in other countries, but so do the best students, languishing in the middle of the pack as measured by the two leading tests used in international comparisons. 

On the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment test, the most recent, 34 of 65 countries and school systems had a higher percentage of 15-year-olds scoring at the advanced levels in mathematics than the United States did. The Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland all had at least twice the proportion of mathematically advanced students as the United States, and many Asian countries had far more than that. 

Other tests have shown that America’s younger students fare better in global comparisons than its older students do, which suggests a disturbing failure of educators to nurture good students as they progress to higher grades. Over all, the United States is largely holding still while foreign competitors are improving rapidly. 

Federal, state and local governments and school districts have put little effort into identifying and developing students of all racial and economic backgrounds, both in terms of intelligence and the sheer grit needed to succeed. There are an estimated three million gifted children in K-12 in the United States, about 6 percent of the student population. Some schools have a challenging curriculum for them, but most do not. 

With money tight at all levels of government, schools have focused on the average and below-average students who make up the bulk of their enrollments, not on the smaller number of students at the top. It is vital that students in the middle get increased attention, as the new Common Core standards are designed to do, but when the brightest students are not challenged academically, they lose steam and check out. 

Analysts and scholars have studied international trends and identified the familiar ingredients of a high-performing educational system: high standards and expectations; creative and well-designed coursework; enhanced status, development and pay of teachers; and a culture where academic achievement is valued, parents are deeply involved and school leaders insist on excellence. 

But raising the performance of the best students will require the country to do far more. Here are a few recommendations:

no math gene

sciencedaily | What makes someone good at math? A love of numbers, perhaps, but a willingness to practice, too. And even if you are good at one specific type of math, you can't trust your innate abilities enough to skip practicing other types if you want to be good.

New research at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim could have an effect on how math is taught. If you want to be really good at all types of math, you need to practice them all. You can't trust your innate natural talent to do most of the job for you.

This might seem obvious to some, but it goes against the traditional view that if you are good at math, it is a skill that you are simply born with.

Professor Hermundur Sigmundsson at Department of Psychology is one of three researchers involved in the project. The results have been published in Psychological Reports.

The numbers The researchers tested the math skills of 70 Norwegian fifth graders, aged 10.5 years on average. Their results suggest that it is important to practice every single kind of math subject to be good at all of them, and that these skills aren't something you are born with.

"We found support for a task specificity hypothesis. You become good at exactly what you practice," Sigmundsson says.

Nine types of math tasks were tested, from normal addition and subtraction, both orally and in writing, to oral multiplication and understanding the clock and the calendar.

"Our study shows little correlation between (being good at) the nine different mathematical skills, Sigmundsson said. "For instance there is little correlation between being able to solve a normal addition in the form of '23 + 67' and addition in the form of a word problem."

This example might raise a few eyebrows. Perhaps basic math is not a problem for the student, but the reading itself is. Up to 20 per cent of Norwegian boys in secondary school have problems with reading. Sigmundsson also finds support in everyday examples.

"Some students will be good at geometry, but not so good at algebra," he says.

If that is the case they have to practice more algebra, which is the area where most students in secondary school have problems.

one of WW-II's darkest secrets...,

Japan's Dirty Secret: The truth about Japan's secret facility at Harbin, used to manufacture germs that infected and killed thousands of Chinese during World War II.

Memories of Japanese war crimes continue to poison Japan's relations with its neighbours. Many Chinese are still suffering the effects of a vicious campaign of germ warfare.

"Our unit did things no human being should ever do," confesses Unit 731 member Yoshio Shinozuka. His unit developed the deadly pathogens which were used to infect 250,000 Chinese. Japan's refusal to apologise for its actions, or to acknowledge Unit 731's existence, has further upset its victims.

A film by ABC Australia - Ref. 1654

"scientific" racism on the ropes among educated highschoolers...,

evolution-outreach | This research investigated the knowledge of the complex concept of evolution in a sample (n=1108) of final-year high school students of Rome. Particular attention was given to the evolution of Homo sapiens and to human diversity at the biological and cultural level. Obtained results were analysed in relation to the socio-cultural context of the students. The final objective of the research is to provide teachers, curriculum developers and policy makers with results on basic knowledge on evolution and human diversity of students who are to face the University.

Methods - The research was conducted using an ad hoc questionnaire in five scientific (Liceo scientifico) and four humanistic (Liceo classico) high schools of Rome. The research involved the final-year students, those who are supposed to have a global basic knowledge of cultural and biological aspects of the evolutionary theory. The research project, its aims and modes of realisation were presented and discussed in detail with Deans, teachers and students of the Institutions that volunteered to participate.

Results - The results show: (1) good knowledge and substantial acceptance of the evolutionary perspective; (2) that cultural and biological diversity are considered as decisive factors in modelling the present-day differences between human groups; (3) that, nonetheless, more than half the students still hold to a classificatory conception of human populations; (4) that the family cultural background is significantly relevant in the education of children.

Conclusions - Results of the research highlight some useful recommendations that should contribute to the work of teachers, curriculum developers and policy makers as they refer to what students have learned about evolution and human diversity. These results confirm the fundamental importance of investment in education.

why are bacteria different from eukaryotes?

biomedcentral | It is true that over the past 15 or 20 years we have identified a surprisingly large number of molecular similarities between bacterial cells and eukaryotic cells. Of course we have known about the profound similarities across the entire phylogenetic tree of life in many of the machines of the central dogma (ribosomes, polymerases, and so on) and the enzymes of central metabolism, but now we’ve also found homologs of the major eukaryotic cytoskeletal proteins in bacteria and many other surprises. But it is still a fundamental observable fact that the vast majority of bacterial cells are physically small and morphologically simple compared with the vast majority of eukaryotic cells. There are certainly exceptions to this - there are bacteria that are large and complicated and there are eukaryotes that are small and simple - but if you just look at any random bacterium versus a random eukaryote, it is clear that there is a fundamental quantitative and qualitative difference in size and complexity. Archaea, which make up the third major domain of life, have some molecular signatures that seem quite similar to those in eukaryotes [1], but morphologically they look very much like bacteria. Indeed this is the reason that we didn’t recognize them as a distinct domain until very recently [2]. The overall argument about the origins of morphological complexity that I want to make here applies equally to bacteria and archaea, but I’m going to focus on bacteria for specific examples just because we know so much more about them. 

The most obvious difference between eukaryotes and bacteria is that there is a membrane-bounded nucleus in eukaryotes and not in bacteria - again, for the most part: there is a bacterium with the wonderful name Gemmata obscuriglobus that is described as having a double membrane enclosing the DNA in a nucleus-like structure [3], although the structure is apparently contiguous with the plasma membrane [4], so in that sense it is very different from a eukaryotic nuclear membrane and this is certainly a special case. But leaving that example aside, the main consequence biologically of having a membrane-enclosed nucleus is that transcription and translation are uncoupled. So there is a fundamental kinetic and organizational difference between eukaryotes and bacteria in the way that genetic information is expressed in the form of protein and is therefore allowed to be converted into cellular structure, function and organization.

anyone misunderstanding the genesis of the Evengelii Gaudium simply hasn't been paying attention...,

wikipedia | The 1998–2002 Argentine great depression was a major economic depression that began in the third quarter of 1998 and lasted till the second quarter of 2002.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]} It almost immediately followed the great depression of 1974–1990 after a brief period of economic growth.^[6]

The depression, which began due to the Russian and Brazilian financial crises and worsened after the dot-com bubble burst,^[1][2] caused widespread unemployment, riots, the fall of the government, a default on the country’s foreign debt, the rise of alternative currencies and the end of the peso’s fixed exchange rate to the US dollar.^[1][2] The economy shrank by 28 percent.^[3][7] Over 50 percent of Argentines were poor, and the indigents amounted 25 percent; seven out of ten Argentine children were poor.^[2][7]

By 2002 GDP growth had returned, surprising economists and the business media,^[8][9] and the economy began to grow at an average 9% per year.^[10][11] In 2005, Argentina’s GDP exceeded pre-crisis level. As of 2013, the default had not been completely resolved, although the government had repaid its IMF loans in full.

Pope Francis mini-biography.

FAR more impressed with Pope Francis than I am with myself....,

collapseofindustrialcivilization | What is often lost in our current infatuation with Enlightenment thinking is the degree to which the Pre-Enlightenment Church managed commerce, financing, and general market forces. In fact, the Church maintained an iron hand on issues such as usury, which was condemned and not distinguished from the “normal” practice of charging interest until the late 19^th century.

In the age of Church hegemony, which lasted for centuries, it was considered immoral, and grossly so, to profit in any way through trade, charging interest, or commerce which resulted in a profit without actually performing any work. specifically, any rent seeking activity was forbidden.

Things that are considered commonplace today, such as raising prices for items needed in a disaster, (supply and demand) were thoroughly rejected by the Church and considered inconceivable during that time. Thomas Aquinas brought forth these concepts in the theory of Just Price in his Summa Theologica circa 1274 AD. Although this was clearly a Pre-Capitalist economy, much learning was put towards strict management of commerce dating back to the money changers being expelled from the temple in Biblical times- a theme oft repeated through the Dark Ages and well beyond.

For centuries, civilizations knew full well the dangers of markets and unconstrained commerce, and there is more than a passing connection between this realization and theology, present in virtually all religions throughout time.

This reality has been brought to the fore with the recent, and controversial, exhortation Evengelii Gaudium from the Roman Catholic Pope. Pundits have been zeroing in on the more provocative aspects after his release of the document last month. I’ve read all 244 pages of it and I’m here to tell you that he has pretty well burned down the Christian right’s moralistic narrative along with a good bit of the more mainstream conservative cohort.

For those who have dismissed previous Papal exhortations (as well as any other messaging, written or otherwise delivered) as irrelevant and hypocritical drivel, and I count myself on this list, the recent missive is a shocker. Let’s take a look as some selected passages:

if you arrange a society based on science and technology, but the masses are ignorant of science and technology....,

seduction and fascination of the infrasexual psyche...,

Exemplary Compilation of the Fascist Gestalt

Why A Middle-Aged White Man Allegedly Decided He Was Going To Bomb A Kansas Airport

BI | Federal officials arrested 58-year-old Terry Lee Loewen on Friday as part of a sting operation into an alleged plot to detonate a car bomb at the Wichita, Kansas airport.

The criminal complaint contains parts of conversations between Loewen, who was reportedly self-radicalized, and an FBI agent who was working undercover.

In these online conversations, Loewen allegedly reveals why he was plotting to bomb the airport. Fist tap Big Don.

when knowledge, love, and work are stunted and frustrated....,

Hermes Press Review of Listen Little Man

wikilivres.ca | Listen, Little Man! Is a human and not a scientific document. It was written in the summer of 1945 for the Archives of the Orgone Institute without the intention of publishing it. It was the result of the inner storms and conflicts of a natural scientist and physician who watched, over decade first naively, then with amazement and finally with horror, what the Little Man in the street does to himself; how he suffers and rebels, how he esteems his enemies and murders his friends; how, wherever he gains power as a ‘representative of the – people’ he misuses this power and makes it into something more cruel than the power which previously he had to suffer at the hands of individual sadists of the upper classes. 

This “Talk” to the Little Man was the quiet answer to gossip and defamation. For decades, the emotional plague has tried again and again to kill orgone research (note well: not to prove it incorrect, but to kill it by defamation). Orgone research carries a very heavy responsibility for human life and health. The fact justifies the publication of this ‘Talk’ or a historical document. It seemed necessary for the ‘man in the street’ to learn what goes on in a scientific workshop and also to learn what he looks like to an experienced psychiatrist. He must learn to know reality, which alone can counteract his disastrous craving for authority. He must be told clearly what responsibility he carries, whether he works, loves, hates or gossips. He must learn how he becomes a Fascist, be it the black or red variety. He who fights for the safeguarding of the living and the protection of our children must needs be against the red as well as the black Fascist. Not because today the red Fascist, like the black Fascist before him, has a murderous ideology, but because he turns lively and healthy children into cripples, robots and moral idiots; because with him, the state comes before right, the lie before truth, war before life; because the child, and the safeguarding of the living in the child, remains our only hope. There is only one loyalty for the educator and physician: that to the living in the child and the patient. If this loyalty is strictly adhered to, the great questions of ‘foreign politics’ also find their simple solution. 

This ‘Talk’ does not imply that one should make it the pattern of one’s existence. It describes storms in the emotional life of a productive, happy individual. It does not want a, convince or win anybody. It pictures experience as a painting pictures a thunderstorm. The reader is not asked to like it. He may read it or not. It does not contain any intentions or programmes. All it wants to do is to win for the researcher and thinker the right to personal reaction, which one has never denied, to the poet or philosopher. It is a protest against the secret and unrecognized intention of the emotional plague to shoot its poison arrows at the hard-working researcher, from a safe ambush. It shows what the emotional plague is, how it functions and retards progress. It also attests to the confidence in the tremendous un-mined treasures, which lie in the depth of human nature: ready to be put in the service of fulfilling human hopes. 

The living, in its social and human interrelationship, is naively kindly and thus, under prevailing conditions, endangered. It assumes that the fellow human also follows the laws of the living and is kindly, helpful and giving. As long a. then is the emotional plague, this natural basic attitude that of the healthy child or the primitive, becomes the greatest danger in the struggle for a rational order of life. For the plague individual also ascribes to his fellow beings the characteristics of his own thinking and acting. The kindly individual believes that all people are kindly and act accordingly. The plague individual believes that all people lie, swindle, steal and crave power. Clearly, then, the living is at a disadvantage and in danger. Where it gives to the plague individual it is sucked dry and then derided or betrayed; and where it trusts it is cheated. 

That’s the way it has always been. It is time for the living a, become hard when hardness is needed in the struggle for its safeguarding and development; in doing so, it will not lose its kindness if it sticks to the truth courageously. There is hope in the fact that, among millions of industrious, decent individuals then an always only just a few pestilential individuals who cause murderous mischief by appealing to the dark nod dangerous impulses in the structure of the armored mass individual and lend them to organized political murder. There is only one antidote to the germs of the emotional plague in the mass individual: his own feeling of living life. The living dots not ask for power but for its proper role in human life. It is based on the three pillars of love, work and knowledge He who has to protect the living against the emotional plague has to lean to use the right to free speech as we enjoy it in America at least as well for the good as the emotional plague misuses it for the bad. Granted equal right in the depression of opinion, the rational finally must win out. This is an important hope.

the modern default configuration when isht gets real....,

ecowatch | Fukushima continues to spew out radiation. The quantities seem to be rising, as do the impacts. The site has been infiltrated by organized crime. There are horrifying signs of ecological disaster in the Pacific and human health impacts in the U.S.

But within Japan, a new State Secrets Act makes such talk punishable by up to ten years in prison.

Taro Yamamoto, a Japanese legislator, says the law “represents a coup d’etat” leading to “the recreation of a fascist state.” The powerful Asahi Shimbun newspaper compares it to “conspiracy” laws passed by totalitarian Japan in the lead-up to Pearl Harbor, and warns it could end independent reporting on Fukushima.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been leading Japan in an increasingly militaristic direction. Tensions have increased with China. Massive demonstrations have been renounced with talk of “treason.” 

But it’s Fukushima that hangs most heavily over the nation and the world.

Tokyo Electric Power has begun the bring-down of hot fuel rods suspended high in the air over the heavily damaged Unit Four. The first assemblies it removed may have contained unused rods. The second may have been extremely radioactive.

But Tepco has clamped down on media coverage and complains about news helicopters filming the fuel rod removal.

Under the new State Secrets Act, the government could ban—and arrest—all independent media under any conditions at Fukushima, throwing a shroud of darkness over a disaster that threatens us all.

By all accounts, whatever clean-up is possible will span decades. The town of Fairfax, CA, has now called for a global takeover at Fukushima. More than 150,000 signees have asked the UN for such intervention.

As a private corporation, Tepco is geared to cut corners, slash wages and turn the clean-up into a private profit center.

It will have ample opportunity. The fuel pool at Unit Four poses huge dangers that could take years to sort out. But so do the ones at Units One, Two and Three. The site overall is littered with thousands of intensely radioactive rods and other materials whose potential fallout is thousands of times greater than what hit Hiroshima in 1945.

Soon after the accident, Tepco slashed the Fukushima workforce. It has since restored some of it, but has cut wages. Shady contractors shuttle in hundreds of untrained laborers to work in horrific conditions. Reuters says the site is heaving infiltrated by organized crime, raising the specter of stolen radioactive materials for dirty bombs and more.

Thousands of tons of radioactive water now sit in leaky tanks built by temporary workers who warn of their shoddy construction. They are sure to collapse with a strong earthquake.

Tepco says it may just dump the excess water into the Pacific anyway. Nuclear expert Arjun Makhijani has advocated the water be stored in supertankers until it can be treated, but the suggestion has been ignored.