Steven Strauss - America: Slouching Towards Third World Status

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity" -- "The Second Coming", William Butler Yeats

Yeats' lines aptly describe our current age of political mediocrity. As we consider our politicians, we can hardly say that they're our best. And the worst of them are full of passionate intensity, with passions driven by ideology, rather than fact-based analysis.

The United States has been in decline relative to other countries for the last 30 years. On key metrics, we've fallen behind our peer group of industrialized countries, such as the UK, France, Germany, and Japan.

Am I exaggerating? Well, according to the Corruption Perception Index, we rank 24th in the world (only slightly better than Qatar) for public sector corruption. We rank 25th (way behind our peer group) in the OECD for math scores among 15-year-olds.

Over the past 30 years, our national debt has grown from about 30 percent of GDP to over 100 percent, and will become much worse based on current trends. In a recent survey of 10,000 Harvard Business School Alumni, "66 percent of respondents see the U.S. falling behind emerging economies." It is difficult to find many encouraging metrics.

Read More:

http://www.project-syndicate.org/blog/america--slouching-towards-third-world-status

Isaac Eliaz - How Safe Is Your Cookware?

As an integrative physician, some of the most important recommendations I make for my patients include advice on diet and healthy eating habits. But what about healthy cooking? Cooking techniques that can increase nutrient availability are certainly an important part of a health-promoting diet. However, many people don’t consider the fact that some cooking methods can also increase the presence of toxins in their meal.

A significant number of consumer reports and scientific studies have revealed the presence of harmful, carcinogenic chemicals and heavy metals in aluminum and other nonstick cookware products. Peer-reviewed research suggests that certain nonstick chemicals can contribute to cancer, birth defects, flulike symptoms, elevated cholesterol, abnormal thyroid hormone levels, liver inflammation, weakened immunity, and other health problems. These chemicals also pollute the environment, including public drinking water, and pose numerous health hazards during the manufacturing process. Such staggering reports are encouraging many to look twice at the cookware they use.

Read More:

http://wakeup-world.com/2012/05/22/how-safe-is-your-cookware/

Anti-vaccine backlash: Thousands refuse to enroll in Austin Community College

Administrators at the Austin Community College (ACC) admit that some 10,000 students have refused to enroll at ACC because of their vaccination requirements. Meanwhile, a Washington State rock band named The Refusers is storming Youtube with their latest hit "First do no harm. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9y4Pq7lXAw

Vaccine refusal is a basic human right that has been often challenged by the pro-vaccine "authorities" from the local well-meaning pediatrician to the government officials all the way down to the school administrators. Even though no school or other agency can force anyone to take a vaccination, policies are written to give the distinct impression that the inoculations are compulsory. Any school administrator who says a student will be refused enrollment without a vaccine is lying.

Enrollment at ACC has declined 15 percent since January, cancelling some 500 classes. When asked why, a huge number of the students are citing the institution's aggressive vaccination policy as their reason to drop out. A similar pattern of this anti vaccine revolt is being seen across the country.

Read More:

http://www.naturalnews.com/035974_college_vaccines_mandates.html

Prof. James F. Tracy - THE FRAMEWORK FOR SUPPRESSING INFORMATION: Public Opinion in America's 21st Century Police State

The police state’s framework for suppressing information and opinion arguably threatens all forms of independent thought and appears poised to intensify as the “war on terror” continues. As the recent emergence of US plans for indoctrination in reeducation camps reveals, Western governments’ actual enemy is the capacity for a people to exercise critical thought en route to intervening in and altering political-economic processes.

Public opinion—defined by 19th century English political thinker William MacKinnon as “that sentiment on any given subject which is entertained by the best informed, most intelligent, and most moral persons in the community”—is fundamentally at odds with police state prerogatives also exemplified in recent US Department of Homeland Security documents.

The technocratic mindset of agencies such as the DHS and Federal Bureau of Investigation that oversee federal, state, and local policing procedures seeks to short-circuit and quell dissent by identifying transgressive thought that deviates from an assumed normalcy, then interlinking it with perceived threats or violent actions against the state. In a grand governmental exercise of Freudian-style projection, the DHS’s usage of inflammatory terms such as “terrorist” and “extremist” are routinely utilized to emphasize the nature and degree of various activist groups’ alleged deviant ideologies. This practice proceeds in light of the fact that most every “terrorist” act within the US since 9/11 has been carefully guided by the FBI or, as was the case with the initial “underwear bomber, Western intelligence agencies likely working in concert.

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30947

David Rosen - The Terrifying Ways Google Is Destroying Your Privacy

In 1999, Scott McNealy, the former head of Sun MicroSystems, reportedly declared, "You have zero privacy anyway....Get over it." He unintentionally let the proverbial cat out of the bag of the digital age. 

In 2009, McNealy’s assessment was confirmed by Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt. In an interview with NBC's Mario Bartiromo, he proclaimed, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Schmidt’s words have become Google’s new mantra. Welcome to 21st-century corporate morality. 

Now, a decade-plus later, McNealy’s prophetic words have take on a far more sinister significance than he probably intended. They are increasingly becoming the operating assumption of the digital corporate state. Whether going online, using a PC, smartphone, tablet or digital TV, users can no longer assume they have any privacy. In fact, users should assume they have absolutely no privacy.

McNealy's and Schmidt's words both speak to a fundamental change in the definition of privacy. Once upon a time not so long ago, a sealed letter or a personal telephone conversation was considered private, protected communications. Those days are over. 

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/155479/the_terrifying_ways_google_is_destroying_your_privacy

Kendall likens GM activists to 1930s nazis

NFU President Peter Kendall has likened activists seeking to destroy the UK's first genetically modified (GM) wheat to Nazis in the 1930s.

A man who caused 'significant damage' at the trial site at the        Rothamsted Research institute on Sunday morning has been arrested by Hertfordshire police and charged with criminal damage.

In a statement Rothamsted said the man caused 'significant, random property damage but failed in his attempt to disrupt the experiment in this attack'.

In a speech to MPs at the House of Commons to launch the new NFU Farming Delivers for Britain campaign, Mr Kendall was expected to liken the damage to the Nazi book burners of the 1930’s.

He was due to say much of British agriculture was using cutting-edge technology and the application of science will determine our future.

“I have to condemn the scandalous attempts over the weekend to destroy the trials of GM wheat at Rothamsted. This is criminal, and must be dealt with as such. It’s worse than that. It is the wilful imposition of ignorance, directly comparable to Nazi book-burning in the 1930’s.

Read More:

http://www.farmersguardian.com/home/arable/kendall-likens-gm-activists-to-1930s-nazis/47112.article

John Feffer - America the Serial Killer

Everybody loves Dexter. He’s handsome. He’s helpful. He works at the Miami Metro Police Department, and he’s very good at his job as a blood-splatter analyst. Oh, did I mention that he moonlights as a serial killer? Don’t worry: he only kills bad guys. That’s part of the code that Dexter’s adoptive father, himself a police officer, passed down to his son. As a child who had watched his mother die a horrendous death, Dexter couldn’t overcome the murderous impulses that surged within him. His father, channeling those impulses in the only constructive way he could think of, created a better monster of his son’s nature: a serial killer of serial killers.

The other essential rule of Dexter’s code: don’t get caught. He is very precise in the way he dispatches his victims, and he will do almost anything to evade detection. Dexter works for the law, but his second job is most definitely above the law.

During its six seasons on Showtime, the popular TV show Dexter has asked a vexing moral question: can a person do good by doing bad? Let’s throw in one more twist. Sometimes Dexter makes mistakes and kills people who don’t fit his definition of Really Bad. He must then wrestle with his (rudimentary) conscience and, more importantly, try to resolve the paradoxes of his father’s code. One last painful element of the Dexter story: his efforts to wipe out bad guys occasionally endanger and even lead to the death of his own nearest and dearest. Dexter has a serious problem, in other words, with blowback.

Read More:

http://www.fpif.org/articles/america_the_serial_killer

Ali Ismail - Homelessness and Despair in New York City

The number of homeless people living on the streets of New York City increased by 23 percent in one year according to an annual survey conducted by the city’s Department of Homeless Services.

On January 30, volunteers for the organization counted an estimated 3,262 people living on the streets— a 23 percent increase from the 2,648 counted in 2011. The 2,925 volunteers walked approximately 15,000 miles while surveying the city. The largest numbers of homeless people living on the streets were found in Manhattan and Brooklyn. About half of the total number of people accounted for in the survey were living inside the city’s subway system.

When the results of the survey were released late last month, Homeless Services Commissioner Seth Diamond said in a statement that the greatest challenge facing the agency was finding more housing options for people without homes.

In a cynical attempt to limit press coverage of the survey, the agency released the data late on a Friday afternoon. This was in stark contrast to a year earlier, when the city’s survey had shown a 30 percent decrease in the street homeless population since 2008. The results for that survey were announced with great fanfare, complete with an elaborate news conference attended by volunteers, formerly homeless people and Linda Gibbs, the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human services.

While the latest survey shows a significant increase in street homelessness, advocates for the homeless believe the actual number of people sleeping rough in the city is much higher and have criticized the survey for failing to count large numbers of homeless individuals, especially those sleeping in non-visible areas like abandoned buildings or alleyways. The Department of Homeless Services itself acknowledges that it only surveys a portion of the city’s surface area (about 20 percent) and only a portion of subway stations.

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30868

Robert Parry - How the US Press Lost Its Way

Editor's Note: From May 10 to May 12, journalist Robert Parry participated in a conference entitled, "From the Pentagon Papers to WikiLeaks: A Transatlantic Conversation on the Public's Right to Know," sponsored by the Heidelberg Center for American Studies in Heidelberg, Germany.

The conference consisted of media figures, legal scholars and freedom-of-information advocates -- and included Neil Sheehan, the New York Times correspondent who got the Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg; and Barry Sussman, the Washington Post editor who oversaw the newspaper's coverage of the Watergate scandal.

Parry spoke on the last day and offered the following observations:

Much of this conference has focused on the glory days of American journalism in the 1970s. And rightly so. My talk, however, will deal with the more depressing question of why things then went so terribly wrong.

First, let me say it's been an honor to be at this conference, especially with Neil Sheehan and Barry Sussman, who played such important roles exposing serious crimes of state in the early to mid-1970s. That was a time when U.S. journalism perhaps was at its best, far from perfect, but doing what the Founders had in mind when they afforded special protections to the American press.

Read More:

http://consortiumnews.com/2012/05/15/how-the-us-press-lost-its-way/

Paul Buchheit - Five Facts That Put America to Shame

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" These words, from poet Emma Lazarus, were inscribed on the Statue of Liberty over 100 years ago. Today the golden door has a lock on it, paid for with record profits from the health care, education, and financial industries

1. We're near the bottom of the developed world in children's health and safety

According to a 2007 UNICEF report, the U.S. ranked last among 21 OECD nations in an assessment of child health and safety. The assessment measured infant mortality, immunization, and death from accidents and injuries.

A related 2009 OECD study generally agreed, placing the U.S. 24th out of 30 OECD countries for children's health and safety. It also showed the devastating effects of inequality in our country. Despite having the second-highest average income for children among the 30 OECD countries, the U.S. ranked 27th out of 30 for child poverty (percentage of children living in households that are below 50% of the median income).

2. We've betrayed the young people who were advised to stay in school

Over 40% of recent college graduates are living with their parents, dealing with government loans that average $27,200. The unemployment rate for young people is about 50%. More than 350,000 Americans with advanced degrees applied for food stamps in 2010.

As Washington lobbyists endeavor to kill a proposed bill to reduce the interest rates on student debt, federal loans remain readily available, and so colleges go right on increasing their tuition.

Meanwhile, corporations hold $2 trillion in cash while looking for investments and employees in foreign countries, and American students are forced to accept menial positions. Yet delusions persist about our new generation of would-be workers. Conservatives are all bubbly about today's young entrepreneurs creating their own jobs -- jobs that "don't yet exist."

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/14-0