It takes guts to go up against the security forces with fire bombs and fireworks.
Author: southwerk
I am a 53 year old teacher. I have double major in Speech and Criminal Justice resulting in a Bachelor's degree from Northeastern State University in Oklahoma and a law degree.
Video shows evidence of snipers firing at protesters in Kiev
I think using snipers with high powered military rifles against protestors is pretty cowardly.
My Heart is with the Ukrainians in the Street
My Heart is with the Ukrainians in the Street
For the first time in my “goody two shoes” life, I want off the safe path. I wish I were there on the streets of Kiev, and not here, safe.
James Pilant
Medic: 70 protesters killed, 500 wounded in Kiev – Yahoo News
“The price of freedom is too high but Ukrainians are paying it,” said Viktor Danilyuk, a 30-year-old protester. “We have no choice, the government isn’t hearing us.”
via Medic: 70 protesters killed, 500 wounded in Kiev – Yahoo News.
From around the web.
From the web site, Cynthia Yildirim’s Web Blog.
http://wittymisfitsinc.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/kiev-ukraine-protest-2014-video-photos-links-news/
The protest is about the Ukraine governments recent deal with Russia, the people are against it. Also, recently a law was passed banning protest, so of course that must also be protested. The Ukrainian people are calling the new government under their president Viktor Yanukovich totalitarian. They are calling for the president to resign, and the deal to end with Russia, and for the EU deal to go through. Viktor Yanukovich has not explained to the people why he entered the deal with Russia, yesterday he asked for a compromise of some type. The protest continue, and the police have surrounded the protesters on both sides, and the protesters have put up barricades of buses, and fires. – CY
Fukushima Leaks Again
Fukushima Leaks Again
I’ve written before about how this crisis is going to run for decades. Just because the media has lost interest doesn’t mean that radiation has stopped leaking. And we can depend on TEPCO continuing to mismanage the problem.
James Pilant
New Highly Radioactive Leak At Fukushima Plant
* Worst radioactive water leak at Fukushima since last August
* Utility says water unlikely to have reached ocean
* Tepco strongly criticised for reaction to 2011 meltdowns (Adds company quote, radiation measurement, more details)
TOKYO, Feb 20 (Reuters) – The operator of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant said on Thursday that 100 tonnes of highly contaminated water had leaked out of a tank, the worst incident since last August, when a series of radioactive water leaks sparked international alarm.
Tokyo Electric Power Co told reporters the latest leak was unlikely to have reached the ocean. But news of the leak at the site, devastated by a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, further undercut public trust in a utility rocked by a string of mishaps and disclosure issues.
“We are taking various measures, but we apologise for worrying the public with such a leak,” said Masayuki Ono, a spokesman for the utility, also known as Tepco.
“Water is unlikely to have reached the ocean as there is no drainage in that tank area.”
Tepco said water overflowed from a large storage tank at the site late on Wednesday after a valve had remained open by mistake and sent too much contaminated water into a separate holding area.
Advantageous Comparison, a Form of Rationalization
Advantageous Comparison, a Form of Rationalization
This is where you rationalize your behavior by comparing yours to someone doing something worse. “At least I’m not a serial killer.” It is a form of rationalization. Look at this quote from a movie.
From The Big Chill
Michael: I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They’re more important than sex.
Sam Weber: Ah, come on. Nothing’s more important than sex.
Michael: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085244/quotes
JP
_____
Advantageous comparison (Moral disengagement, part 4) | Engaging Peace
Advantageous comparison is another form of moral disengagement described byUp and down arrows psychologist Albert Bandura. This mechanism is a way of trying to make one behavior look good by comparing it with a more frightful alternative.
For example, during the Vietnam War, massive destruction of the Vietnamese countryside by means of Agent Orange was portrayed as being a lot better for the Vietnamese people than being enslaved by the Communists.
via Advantageous comparison (Moral disengagement, part 4) | Engaging Peace.
From around the web.
From the web site, Wise Geek.
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-moral-disengagement.htm
Moral disengagement theory was developed by Albert Bandura, a developmental and social psychologist. This theory seeks to analyze the means through which individuals rationalize their unethical or unjust actions. Moral disengagement can be achieved through various mechanisms, such as moral justification, euphemistic labeling, advantageous comparison or attribution of blame.
One of the mechanisms for moral disengagement is moral justification. Under this mechanism, people who engage in immoral or injurious conduct seek to justify their actions through morality. To such people, any such act is considered a service to humanity or for the greater good of the community.
Military Families Often Depend on Food Stamps
Military Families Often Depend on Food Stamps
Our military is all-volunteer. We pay people to defend the nation. Apparently, we don’t pay very much.
When did a McDonald’s style wage become the norm across the United States? From adjunct professors, to government contract workers , to our soldiers, no one in those groups makes much more than a fast food worker. There are airline pilots making 18,000 a year. Is that the goal? – that everyone in America who works in a salaried job make around twenty thou a year?
James Pilant
Military Families’ Reliance On Food Stamps Hit A Record High Last Year
Military families were more reliant on food stamps in 2013 than in any previous year, according to a Department of Defense (DOD) review that found over $100 million in food stamps spending at military grocery stores last year.
The DOD-run stores, known as commissaries, sell food to active-duty and retired military personnel and their families at prices that are lower than what private grocers charge. Nearly $104 million of the $6.2 billion in total revenue the commissaries brought in during fiscal year 2013 came from food stamps.
Food stamp usage at the stores has more than quadrupled since 2007 as the recession compounded the already difficult financial situation faced by military families. New soldiers with a child and a spouse earn $20,000 per year in pay, according to CNN Money, and the frequent relocations and disruptions inherent to the lifestyle of a military family make it harder for military spouses to find jobs and bring in supplementary income. The unemployment rate for young military spouses was 30 percent in 2012. Retired military servicemen and women who joined up after 9/11 have a 10 percent unemployment rate, which also contributes to the elevated food stamp figures at DOD commissaries, and nearly a million working-age veterans lived in poverty in 2010.
via Military Families’ Reliance On Food Stamps Hit A Record High Last Year.
From around the web.
From the web site, Military.com.
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2013/07/13/dod-5000-military-families-losing-food-stamps.html
The House action that stripped food stamp funding from a massive farm bill would threaten vital assistance for about 5,000 military families, mostly from the junior enlisted ranks, Pentagon officials said Friday.
A Department of Agriculture report last year showed that more than 5,000 of the 48 million Americans receiving Supplementary Nutritional Assistance Program (food stamps) listed their employment status as “active duty military,” the Pentagon officials said.
“Military members who receive SNAP tend to be made up of members in junior pay grades with larger than average household sizes,” said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen, a Defense Department spokesman.
Post Office Banking?
Post Office Banking?
I think this is an idea whose time has come (again!). Instead of payday loans and check cashing places we let the post office do it. The idea that the Post Office should provide banking services was one of the platforms of the Grange back at the turn of the 20th century.
Post Office banking would save people without current banking services hundreds of dollars a year and run out of business a good number of unsavory businesses who prey on the poor.
James Pilant
Poll: Americans Like Elizabeth Warren’s Call To Replace Payday Lenders With Post Office Banking
Nearly a fifth of the country doesn’t know what to make of the idea of getting basic banking services from the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), according to a new poll, but support for the idea outweighs opposition by a substantial margin among the rest of the populace.
The poll found 44 percent in favor of and 37 percent opposed to the idea put forth recently by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to have the USPS replace check-cashing and payday-lending businesses. The survey found 19 percent unsure of their position. That significant level of uncertainty in the YouGov/Huffington Post survey of nearly 1,000 people suggests that public opinion of the postal banking idea could still break in either direction. (While YouGov is an online polling system, it is not a haphazard one, and its methodology has been embraced as scientific by polling expert Nate Silver.)
The idea behind the proposal Warren made in early February is actually much older and comes from two seemingly disparate public policy problems. The first is payday lending itself. That predatory industry siphons more than $3 billion per year out of the country’s poorest communities by charging average annual interest rates of nearly 400 percent to people too desperate for cash to worry about the fine print. State-level crackdown efforts in the past have proven largely ineffective because the industry wields significant influence with lawmakers and because it simply changes tactics to evade the few regulations that do make it past their army of lobbyists. Federal oversight is finally coming to the industry after it had slipped through the regulatory cracks for years, and that scrutiny has caused major banks to drop their internal high-interest cash advance programs that duplicated some of the payday lending industry’s worst practices.
via Poll: Americans Like Elizabeth Warren’s Call To Replace Payday Lenders With Post Office Banking.
Fire Richie Incognito, Now.
Fire Richie Incognito, Now.
What kind of harassment gets you fired? You can be fired for harassing on the basis of race. He did that. You can be fired for offensive touching. He did that. You can be fired for sexual harassment, even male on male. He did that. You can be fired for encouraging and organizing others to create a hostile work environment. He did that. Your can be fired for extorting money. He did that.
So, how much is enough? He’s should have been fired when all this began. He should have been fired a dozen times by now. What does it take?
I don’t know. Maybe, the “macho” culture of the NFL sanctifies moronic and cruel behavior?
When people have said in that past that sports built character and provided role models for young people, I have argued that this was an overblown argument.
No longer.
I deny that sports and, in particular, the NFL, provide any role models that we should expose children to.
A gentleman would never behave like Richie Incognito. Any sport that tolerates this kind of behavior deserves to be hidden from public view, shorn of its public benefits and television air time.
If they can’t clean up their act, it will have to be cleaned up for them. Enough is enough.
James Pilant
(If you have a very, very strong stomach – here are some partial transcripts of what Incognito said:) http://deadspin.com/the-worst-stuff-from-the-dolphins-investigation-updati-1522846626?utm_campaign=socialflow_deadspin_twitter&utm_source=deadspin_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
Wells report, Richie Incognito: The NFL’s investigation of the Miami Dolphins locker room is the best report on bullying I’ve ever read.
Ted Wells’ independent investigation of the Miami Dolphins and the culture of their offensive line is the opposite of a whitewash. The investigators’ 140-plus page report on the events leading up to Jonathan Martin’s departure from the team is judicious, persuasive, and a public service. Carefully sifting through the evidence, it concludes that Richie Incognito and two teammates who acted as his henchmen humiliated and harassed Martin, another unnamed teammate, and an assistant trainer for months in ways that no employee should have to endure. This report should be required reading in management courses and for anyone who wonders how ugly, demeaning, and corrosive treatment can lie beneath a façade of “all in good fun” workplace “teasing.”
The report should also be a watershed moment for the Dolphins and the NFL. Its conclusions will only have real power if it leads to real consequences. Given his record of past infractions, Incognito should not play in the NFL. Not next year, and probably not ever. And the Dolphins should fire offensive line coach Jim Turner, who participated in the bullying.
I’ve often half-joked that to really understand an accusation of bullying, you need a police investigation, with all the tools for rigorously evaluating the credibility of everyone’s account. With more than 100 interviews of Dolphins players, coaches, and managers, as well as thousands of text messages, that’s what this report is. For this we should credit not just the professionalism of the investigative team, but the openness of Jonathan Martin. He gave his permission to air sensitive, private information about his struggles with depression and suicidal thinking. It’s a personal sacrifice that will no doubt expose him to hurt and criticism—and that allows for the kind of honest reckoning that can help other victims of bullying, both adults and kids.
From around the web.
From the web site, Tiny Cat Pants.
http://tinycatpants.wordpress.com/2013/11/08/richie-incognito/
Richie Incognito
Two things about this just utterly depress me. One is this idea that you can be that kind of evil hothead and people think that you can just “keep it in the locker room” or “leave it on the field.” I’m not opposed to sports. I don’t think that a person who hits a ball is likely to hit a person. Or that a person who does something while in uniform is destined to do that thing out of uniform.
But I don’t think you can get positive reinforcement for scaring the shit out of people outside of the context of the game and calling names and acting like a jerk and not have it leak out into your regular life. It’s just not a psychological change most people can make. If you get praise for it, it’s very difficult to set it aside when outside of contexts where you get praise for it.
But second, and most importantly, I find the men rushing to Incognito’s defense, trying to explain it away as “locker room” or “its own culture” to be so damn sad. Because you shouldn’t have to work at a job where your co-workers use racial epithets against you. And yet, to see all these guys arguing that it’s okay, it’s obviously okay because that’s the norm. They literally expect no better. They get to be millionaires and cultural heroes and the epitome of manliness. It’s still so ordinary for them to be called or to hear a teammate the n-word or by white guys that they get on TV and argue that it’s okay.
They expect nothing better than Incognito’s actions.
It’s just utterly depressing.
From the web site, (This is a teaching web site, most impressive. The author is Andy Driska, and I’ve got to say, a very clever and skilled teacher. This is a fascinating assignment.) kin445, Michigan State.
Odds are, if you follow sports, you heard some of the coverage of the Jonathan Martin – Richie Incognito affair. If you aren’t familiar with it, see the first source in the list below (USA Today timeline). In sum, Martin left the team suddenly, accusing teammates of bullying and harassment. Sport media focus on this issue first presented a narrative that the accusations of bullying in the locker room were signs that Martin was a “soft” player. Media focused on the commonly held belief that players are simply not as tough as they used to be (noting rules that protect quarterbacks, prevent certain types of tackles, or prevent playing after a suspected concussion). However, as the issue unfolded, and more evidence entered the court of public opinion, including audio of Incognito’s phone messages to Martin (NOTE: I will not provide a link to the audio given its graphic nature, but you can Google it if you must hear these phone messages for yourself), the narrative shifted to place blame on “a failure of leadership.”
A Fracking Earthquake?
A Fracking Earthquake?
This is just another one of those things the industry doesn’t like the rest of us to talk about. The cloak of secrecy the industry continues would rival any military operation in the world. We do know that they contaminate wells, bring up radioactive water from deep in the earth, damage the health of both humans and animals, and evidence is stacking up that they cause earthquakes.
It’s kind of interesting to have a business ethics story of this kind. While it is a national tragedy, academically it’s a beauty of a disaster which will change the field of business ethics forever. After all. we now know when the Vice-President is a former CEO of Haliburton and has years of closed door meetings with energy companies, something bad is about to happen. We now know that when the Congress votes to protect a single industry from government from the laws protecting air and water, that industry is going to do something to the air and water. We now know that when the government is prevented from doing studies and overseeing an industry that our information about the effects of that industry will fragmented, often anectdotal and take years before enough evidence is accumulated before action can be taken.
And as usual, we know that it would have been so much better if we knew then what we know now.
James Pilant
Is Fracking Causing Earthquakes? | Crooks and Liars
In Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio and other states, people who have rarely experienced earthquakes in the past are getting used to them as a fairly common phenomenon. This dramatic uptick in tremors is related to drilling for oil and natural gas, several reports find. And the growing popularity of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is in part to blame.
Between 1970 and 2000, there was an average of 20 earthquakes per year within the central and eastern United States. Between 2010 and 2013, there was an average of more than 100 earthquakes annually. A United States Geological Survey released last month summarized research on man-made earthquakes conducted by one of the agency’s geophysicists:
USGS scientists have found that at some locations the increase in seismicity coincides with the injection of wastewater in deep disposal wells. Much of this wastewater is a byproduct of oil and gas production and is routinely disposed of by injection into wells specifically designed for this purpose.
So, the actual hydraulic fracturing process itself is not to blame in these cases; instead, it’s the injection of wastewater into deep wells that accompanies it.
Hydraulic fracturing produces a higher volume of wastewater than traditional drilling — as the name implies, drillers use millions of gallons of high-pressure water, sand and chemicals to break apart rock and release gas trapped in pockets in the earth. The wastewater generated is often contaminated with salt or poisonous chemicals, and environmental regulations bar drilling companies from allowing it to mix with drinking water; oftentimes, the most economical way for these companies to dispose of it is to sequester it deep in the ground, below aquifers. Once there, it changes pressure underground and lubricates fault lines, with the potential effect of causing earthquakes.
In both Texas and Oklahoma, the number of earthquakes per year has increased ten-fold. And wells storing wastewater from fracking have also been linked to hundreds of earthquakes near Youngstown, Ohio.
Is Fracking Causing Earthquakes? | Crooks and Liars.
From around the web.
From the web site, Akron Dave.
http://akrondave.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/fracking-suspected-as-cause-of-texas-earthquakes/
A group of residents of a small Texas community traveled to the state capital to protest hydraulic fracturing, “fracking,” in their community that is being blamed for about 30 earthquakes since November.
This follows reports of earthquakes near Youngstown, Ohio, last year that were linked to fracking wells, which led the usually business-friendly Gov. John Kasich to order the operation to shut down.
If Texas quakes are like the Ohio seismic activity, the problem could be the injection of fracking wastewater into the ground near a fault line. Geologists say the liquid can create “slippage” in faults, which triggers the quakes.
The fact that fracking has helped dramatically reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil and natural gas makes shutting down fracking operations highly unpopular in some circles. But when the earth is shaking under your feet, you gotta take it seriously.
I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about this.
The Curse of the Princeton Mom Returns!
The Curse of the Princeton Mom Returns!
The Princeton Mom who last year explained to college women to skip all that pointless academic crap and focus on getting a husband is back! The Wall Street Journal in its continued quest to reduce one-half of humankind to barefoot and pregnant, happily provides a platform. While you can almost sense in the background of the article a “Why haven’t you given me grand-children?” style of thinking, the focus of the article is that women can only be fulfilled through a good man. It’s as if the worst stereotype of the television Jewish mother had mated with the ideological purity of the WSJ.
She doesn’t just say that catching a man is the most important thing to do while in college. She tells women that this requires careful planning. She sketches out a long term strategy where you not only target the men currently in school but collect their names so you can look them up later and see how economically successful they have become. You almost get a sense of a female black widow building an internet web while sensing prey.
This sounds suspiciously to me like putting giant $$ bulls eyes on male classmates. Of course, this puts a whole new spin on Women Who Run With the Wolves. According the Princeton Mom they’re not being strong or independent, they’re hunting men.
I don’t want to be hunted. I believe that I share the opinion of the vast majority of men, that this would flattering for a brief time but after that it would just be creepy.
Besides, I like smart women. I like independent women who don’t let me get away with sloppy thinking or overconfidence. I’m not perfect. I need a questioning partner to keep me on track. And I can’t help but think that if I was being pursued in Princeton Mom style, what I am as a person would take a very, very back seat to “How much money does he make?”
I freely admit that the Princeton Mom would consider me a wretched catch, too short, too old, too poor and too ugly.
So you see, I have a personal stake in all this. As a person who is in the process of becoming single again after a quarter century of marriage being considered on an economic basis and apparently in some way a fulfillment of a woman’s life strikes me as scary. I’m not going to become wealthy or even financially secure. I live pay-check to pay-check in a very similar fashion to my students.
But this is not the main problem. I don’t want to be the fulfillment of a woman’s life. That’s a responsibility that I can’t fulfill. I’m flawed and even I were not, I would not want to do it. I can’t make someone happy. I can’t make another person’s life worthwhile. I can love a woman and try to be there for her but I am as subject to death or injury as anyone else. Relying on me for fulfillment is bound to be a disappointment if only because I might die first.
And that is my main point here, men cannot fulfill women’s lives. If women are essentially useful containers for baby making then their only fulfillment is in men (and baby making). But women are not that. They are fellow human beings, and just like men, they find fulfillment by searching and suffering for it. Neither I nor the other men in this world can make a woman’s life worthwhile, they have to do that.
The reason colleges are not infested with desperate husband hunting women is simple. Women know better. They know that independence, intelligence and accomplishment are worthwhile goals. I like that. When I go to teach my classes in the morning, the intelligence and perceptiveness of my students is always a delight. I don’t perceive the women in my classes as being one whit less dedicated to becoming significant and powerful than the males.
The time where the Princeton Mom’s advice made sense is over. We live in a new era. There is a lot I don’t like about this time in American history but I do like the way women are challenging and complex. It makes talking to them fun. It must have been a very intellectually deficient world when they were just conveniences. Or when they were trained to smile and feign amusement when males talked.
It took us a long time to get to where women weren’t toys or fantasies. I like living here in this time where women can become more than what they could before. It’s better than how it used to be.
James Pilant
Princeton Mom is back: Susan Patton writes for the Wall Street Journal, annoys everybody.
Susan Patton, the mother who seared herself into our nightmares last March when she wrote a letter in the Daily Princetonian urging women to collect that MRS degree, stat, is back. This time she has taken her retrograde loonery to the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Her Valentine-themed opinion piece, about how college women need to “smarten up and start husband-hunting,” is full of the absurd generalizing, medieval gender roles, Ivy League snobbery, and general wrongheadedness you might expect. (There is also a delightfully cuckoo line about Noam Chomsky and the Bayeux tapestry.) But the question arises: Is Patton’s latest effort more insulting to men or to women? Below, a brief accounting:
Another Valentine’s Day. Another night spent ordering in sushi for one and mooning over “Downton Abbey” reruns. Smarten up, ladies.
Apparently sushi and Downton Abbey are not a winning combo, and women need to “smarten up” to the fact that we are huge miserable failures unless we spend Feb. 14 feeding our Yale-educated husbands lobster on an enormous bed of pearls. (He murmurs something romantic in Latin. You reply in ancient Greek. His personal assistants, also Yalies, dim the lights. Scene.) More insulting to: women.
Despite all of the focus on professional advancement, for most of you the cornerstone of your future happiness will be the man you marry. But chances are that you haven’t been investing nearly as much energy in planning for your personal happiness as you are planning for your next promotion at work. What are you waiting for? You’re not getting any younger, but the competition for the men you’d be interested in marrying most definitely is.
via Princeton Mom is back: Susan Patton writes for the Wall Street Journal, annoys everybody..
From around the web.
From the web site, The Daily Jewish Forward.
http://blogs.forward.com/sisterhood-blog/180661/princeton-mom-is-no-jewish-mom/
Earlier this year, Patton sparked outrage and, we can only assume, mortifyingly embarrassed her two sons when she wrote in the newspaper of her beloved (I cannot stress that word enough) alma mater the Daily Princetonian. Her essay, “Advice for the young women of Princeton: the daughters I never had,” had at its core one simple message: Ladies, grab a Princeton man (any fellow stumbling out of an eating club in a garish orange-and-black polo will do) and marry him! Quick! Marry him before you’re lost in a world of non-Princeton grads that will never fulfill you, neither intellectually nor romantically, and you die alone, yearning for Ivy League loving.
I exaggerate … but only slightly. Here are some keys pearls of wisdom from Ms. Patton:
You will never again be surrounded by this concentration of men who are worthy of you.
Another:
Find a husband on campus before you graduate.
And, my personal favorite:
As freshman women, you have four classes of men to choose from. Every year, you lose the men in the senior class, and you become older than the class of incoming freshman men. So, by the time you are a senior, you basically have only the men in your own class to choose from, and frankly, they now have four classes of women to choose from. Maybe you should have been a little nicer to these guys when you were freshmen?
I must concur with Ms. Patton that as I’ve reached the spinster age of 23, there’s nothing I regret more than not marrying the senior with Keystone-flavored breath the instant he dove at my freshman face at a house dance at my own fair, ivy-covered institution.
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