Tag: american

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Global wealth in the new millennium

imgres-1In his now well-known book The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria popularized understandings of shifts in the global landscape, especially in economic terms. The book explained that while the U.S. was retaining it’s military superiority, the country was draining itself financially – as other nations were quietly prospering. Today’s edition of Le Monde carries an article by Serge Halimi giving further details:

“Today’s emerging powers are not worthy successors to their anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist ancestors. The countries of the South control a growing share of wealth, which is only proper, but its distribution is so inequitable that income differences are even greater in South Africa and China than in the US. The money Continue reading “Global wealth in the new millennium”

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Better life for the kids? Who knows?

American polling is a funny business, especially at a time when that nation seems unable to make up its mind on just about anything.

Today the Gallup organization reported that Americans have no idea whether their children will be better off in the future or not. According to Gallup,

“Americans are evenly divided about whether it is likely (49%) or unlikely (50%) that the next generation of youth in the country will have a better life than their parents. That is a slightly more positive assessment than in early 2011, when the slight majority, 55%, thought it was unlikely the next generation would achieve this goal.imgres

“Still, views today remain depressed compared with 2008 Continue reading “Better life for the kids? Who knows?”

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And now, the robot ship

“Anti-mine warfare is a critical mission for the Navy, as nations like Iran can mess with the global economy just by threatening to plant mines in crucial commercial waterways,” reports DangerRoom today.

“Ashton, the Navy’s program manager for its seafaring robots, has a different idea:

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Let the robots do the dirty work. By April, he tells Danger Room, he hopes to solicit defense contractors to build something called the Unmanned Influence Sweep System, or UISS, a robotic ship charged with speeding out into suspected minefields and essentially fooling them into detonating them before they come in contact with a ship full of sailors. If the UISS works as intended, it’ll be part of a fleet of near-future Navy robot ships and subs designed to neutralize some of the most immediate threats on the high seas. Continue reading “And now, the robot ship”

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American prison population quietly declines

It’s common knowledge that the U.S. has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, especially among it minority populations.

Less known is that those numbers are dropping, ableit slowly. As reported in thesamefacts.com, this is the “most underreported public policy story of the past year: The continuing decline in the number of Americans who are behind bars or on probation/parole. Both the change itself and low level of attention it has garnered are worthy of reflection.” Keith Humphries offers some excellent analysis:

“At the time of President Obama’s inauguration, the incarceration rate in the United States had been

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rising every single year since the mid 1970s.The relentless growth in the proportion of Americans behind bars had persisted through good economic times and bad, Republican and Democratic Presidents, and countless changes in state and local politics around the country. Continue reading “American prison population quietly declines”

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Airline pilots use iPads, not disabled passengers

imgres-2All American Airlines pilots are permitted to use iPads as they fly.

In the interest of safety on a recent American Airlines flight, an attendant required a non-verbal teenager to put away the iPad she relies upon to speak.

News of the incident –  and the irony – has created an uproar on the internet and considerable acrimony over the airline’s policies.

Carly Fleischmann, a 17-year-old with autism from Toronto, lambasted American Airlines on her  Facebook page earlier this week.
“On her way home from Los Angeles last Friday, Fleischmann said that a flight attendant told her to put away the tablet for takeoff and landing and was unwilling to bend even after Fleischmann’s aide explained that it was a communication device,” reports DisabilityScoop , Continue reading “Airline pilots use iPads, not disabled passengers”

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Drone strikes on Afghanistan break records this year

As if there was any doubt, official statistics show more deadly drone strikes against Afghanistan in 2012 than the U.S. has ever done anywhere. As Danger Room reports,

“Last month, military stats revealed that the U.S. had launched some 333 drone strikes in Afghanistan thus far in 2012. That made Afghanistan the epicenter of U.S. drone attacks — not Pakistan, not Yemen, not Somalia. But it turns out those stats were off, according to revised ones released by the Air Force on Thursday morning. There have actually been 447 drone strikes in Afghanistan this year. That means drone strikes represent 11.5 percent of the entire air war — up from about 5 percent last year.

“Never before in Afghanistan have there been so many drone strikes. For the past three years, the strikes have never topped 300 annually, even during the height of the surge. Never mind 2014, when U.S. troops are supposed to take a diminished role in the war and focus largely on counterterrorism. Afghanistan’s past year, heavy on insurgent-hunting robots, shows that the war’s future has already been on display.

 

For more see: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/12/2012-drones-afghanistan/

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White bias in US fertility care

After the recent U.S. elections, several conservatives remarked that “traditional America” was on the decline, largely due to new voter demographics. But American medical science doesn’t seem to be bending over backwards to help minority families have children––quite the opposite. As reported in today’s Huffington Post by law professor Jim Hawkins, “

“People who study the fertility business have been concerned for years over the fact that racial minorities utilize fertility treatments at a lower rate than whites. Continue reading “White bias in US fertility care”

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U.S. claims “enormous” reductions in carbon emissions

At today’s United Nations Climate Change meeting in Doha, Qatar, American officials asserted the U.S. had made “enormous” advances that much of the world didn’t know about. As reported in The Guardian, American progress in climate change has resulted in part by the carbon reductions from its investments in the controversial practice of “fracking” for shale gas. As reported by Fiona Harvey,

“The claim came as nearly 200 governments gathered in Doha, Qatar, for two weeks of talks aimed at forging an agreement on the climate. Governments have until 2015 to draw up a binding treaty, the first since the 1997 Kyoto protocol, to cut greenhouse gas emissions and avoid dangerous global warming. Continue reading “U.S. claims “enormous” reductions in carbon emissions”

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The Obama murder manual

Since President Obama took office in 2008, the CIA has killed 2,500 people with robotically controlled drones run by technicians housed in remote trailers. Anticipating a possible new regime in Washington, the administration accelerated work on a set of guidelines to give a new president standards and criteria for future killings. It’s worth noting, that 70 percent of the deaths have been civilian casualties, according to TruthOut (See, “Civilian Deaths From US Drone Attacks Much Higher Than Reported”

The secret drone policy under consideration was discussed in today’s Continue reading “The Obama murder manual”

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Swan song of English accents

In the days of the British Empire, both the English language and English accents of that language were spread around the globe. But ever since World War II and the rise of U.S. media, things changed.

Fast forward to 2102 and the release of the new James Bond thriller Skyfall, and it’s title song recorded English singer Adele. As discussed this week in Slate, “Though Adele speaks with a strong London accent, her singing voice sounds more American than British. Why do British vocalists often sound American when they sing?”

“Because that’s the way everyone expects pop and rock musicians to sound. British pop singers have been imitating American pronunciations since Cliff Richards, the Beatles, and Continue reading “Swan song of English accents”

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Iran sanctions deny medicine to 6-million

Economic sanctions like those now in place for Iran are intended to put pressure on a national government by making things tough for businesses. The sanctions now in place by the U.S. and European Union restrict sales to Iran of just about everything, except medical items and food, which are permitted though a case-by-case basis permitting process. Unfortunately, the permitting process is so slow that as many as 6-million Iranians now are not receiving needed medicines. Many of those affected are cancer patients. As reported in Al Jazeera, The New York Times, and elsewhere, efforts are now underway to correct what has recently been recognized as a public health crisis in Iran, largely resulting from U.S. actions. The news of Iranian suffering is further escalating anti-American sentiment.

In “Iran Sanctions Take Unexpected Toll on Medical Imports,” Thomas Erdbrink writes, “Sitting on one of the Continue reading “Iran sanctions deny medicine to 6-million”

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“Homeland’s” Muslim problem

Muslim and Arab stereotypes are nothing new in American media. From Ali Baba to Aladdin, negative images have persisted in children’s stories. Then came 9/11 and Hollywood’s need for an all-purpose post-Cold War villain––and the stage was set for the universalized charicature of the terrorist. Regrettably, this year’s most celebrated television drama series, Homeland, is fueled largely by such xenophobic ideology, which it serves up with troubling representations of sexuality and race. And yes, Homeland is our beloved President’s favorite show. A wonderfully thorough discussion of these issues appears in the article “Homeland, Obama’s Show” appearing this week in Aljazeera.com.

For readers unaware of the program’s premise, Homeland is an updated Manchurian Candidate narrative about a brainwashed former Marine who becomes a congressman. As discussed in the Aljazeera.com article by Joseph Massad, “The racist representation of Arabs is so exponential, even for American television (and this Continue reading ““Homeland’s” Muslim problem”

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First Native American saint

This week the Vatican will canonize its first ever Native American saint, Kateri Tekakwitha. As the Catholic Church has already bestowed such status on 10,000 other people, this is a pretty big deal. A member of the Mohawk tribe who lived in the seventeenth century, Kateri was chosen for canonization following the miraculous recovery of a five-year old boy in 2006. Large numbers of Catholic Native Americans from the US and Canada will make the journey to Rome to witness the recognition of their own personal Saint by Pope Benedict XVI. Coverage of the canonizaton appears in the current edition Time News Feed, and elsewhere. As Sorcha Pollack writes,  “Kateri Tekakwitha, also known as Lily of the Mohawks, was born in 1656 in what is today upstate New York. Continue reading “First Native American saint”

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One in five Americans now “non-religious”

These days the Pew Research Center has been doing more than polling voters. In a new study, Pew reports a precipitous drop in the number of Americans who identify as “religious.” In a report entitled “”Nones” on the Rise,” Pew finds that “one-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling. In the last five years alone, the unaffiliated have increased from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. Their ranks now include more than 13 million self-described atheists and agnostics (nearly 6% of the U.S. public), as well as nearly 33 million people who say they have no particular religious affiliation (14%). This large and growing group of Americans is less religious than the public at large on many conventional measures, including frequency of attendance at religious services and the degree of importance they attach to religion in their lives. Continue reading “One in five Americans now “non-religious””