The Pentagon and Slave Labor in U.S. Prisons Prisoners earning 23 cents an hour in U.S. federal prisons are manufacturing high-tech electronic components for Patriot Advanced Capability 3 missiles, launchers for TOW (Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided) anti-tank missiles, and other guided missile systems. A March article by journalist and financial researcher Justin Rohrlich of World in Review is worth a closer look at the full implications of this ominous development. (minyanville.com) The expanding use of prison industries, which pay slave wages, as a way to increase profits for giant military corporations, is a frontal attack on the rights of all workers. Prison labor — with no union protection, overtime pay, vacation days, pensions, benefits, health and safety protection, or Social Security withholding — also makes complex components for McDonnell Douglas/Boeing’s F-15 fighter aircraft, the General Dynamics/Lockheed Martin F-16, and Bell/Textron’s Cobra helicopter. Increased profits, unhealthy workplaces
Is writing a book What Started the Obesity Epidemic in America? July 26, 2011 | 234,985 views Share The website Fooducate has taken a look at the annual obesity report issued by Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Here are some of the 12 shocking statistics they found: Adult obesity rates rose in 16 U.S. states over the past year, and NOT ONE state decreased Twelve U.S. states now have obesity rates above 30 percent Just 4 years ago, only one state had an obesity rate above 30 percent Obesity rates exceed 25 percent in more than two-thirds of U.S. states Mississippi had the highest rate of obesity (34.4 percent) Colorado was the only state with a rate below 20 percent -- and next year will probably be above Adult diabetes rates increased in 11 states and Washington, D.C. in the past year; in 8 states, more than 10 percent of adults now have type 2 diabetes. High school dropouts have the highest rates of obesity To read the rest of their list, you can click on the link below.
s blog Plutocracy: If Corporations and the Rich Paid 1960s-Level Taxes, the Debt Would Vanish | Economy July 24, 2011 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Once upon a time in America, back a century ago, our nation's rich paid virtually nothing in taxes to the federal government. But those average Americans would do battle, over the next half century, to rein in the rich and the corporations that made them ever richer. America's wealthy, predictably, counterattacked — and, by the 1980s, they were scoring successes of their own. Today, the rich and their corporations no longer bear anything close to their rightful share of the nation's tax burden. This “debt crisis” in no way had to happen. Some numbers — from an Institute for Policy Studies report released this past spring — can help us better visualize just how monumental this political failure has been. In 2007, Diamond and Saez point out, taxpayers in the nation's top 1 percent actually paid, on average, 22.4 percent of their incomes in federal taxes. No mystery here.
Solara An-Ra : Goddess of the Light - Home Queen tried to get UK poverty fund to heat palace published online: 9/25/2010 LONDON - Even a monarch needs a little help from time to time - especially when the cost of heating those drafty old palaces spirals past $1.5 million a year. But a request for assistance from a government fund that provides subsidized heating to low-income Britons has caused a spot of bother for Queen Elizabeth II, long one of the world's wealthiest women. Her Majesty's application in 2004 was politely turned down by the government - in part because of fear of adverse publicity - and quietly forgotten until The Independent newspaper published the correspondence Friday. The documents quote an unidentified functionary as gently reminding the royal household the program was meant for people in need, not the upper crust, and he noted the potential public relations disaster. Advertisement "I also feel a bit uneasy about the probable adverse press coverage if the Palace were given a grant at the expense of, say, a hospital," the official said.
s blog | All Blog Entries You have no idea how many nights I've dreamed of my soul mate. I can see her and I think she's in this world too. She's a short tiny brunette haired girl and sometimes when I dream of her and I get to hold her in the Astral plane. Last night I got to see her face very well. I just looked up the international keyboard layouts and I think she might be from Spain or Mexico or just speaks Spanish, since the Spanish keyboards have the backslash in the upper left and then the tilda a few keys to the right. She looks kind of like this girl: I've been asking the cosmos to bring her into my life for quite some time now. NOTE: Those who know me know that it always felt over the top when someone said so and so is my soul mate, yadda yadda. The way I'm using "soul mate" and "twin flame" is to describe a genuine connection with someone whom you can deeply feel a connection with like no other. Keywords: dreams , soul mate , twin flames
How 'Twilight,' other dark fiction affect teen brains Scientists, authors and education experts are meeting this weekend at Cambridge University to investigate how the teenage brain is affected or altered by reading the "Twilight" saga, the "Harry Potter" series and other books that invite fear and anxious emotional responses. Edward Cullen altering the teen brain? This is one education conference that I would have enjoyed attending. (I have two teenage daughters.) It turns out, according to the organizer of the interdisciplinary conference, called "The Emergent Adult -- Adolescent Literature and Culture,” that fiction with dark themes does indeed alter teen brains in sometimes important ways. The conference is bringing together scientists, authors and education experts to make connections between recent neuroscience research and the representation of the adolescent in literature, film, computer games and social networking sites. Inside the teenage brain, synapses are breaking and reforming, and the chemistry keeps changing. Q. A. Nothing.
s blog US physics professor: 'Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life' Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Here is his letter of resignation to Curtis G. Callan Jr, Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society. It's so utterly damning that I'm going to run it in full without further comment. Dear Curt: When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).