The Cruelty of Racial Prejudice

Portrait of a young Choctaw woman her body tur...
Portrait of a young Choctaw woman her body turned to the left, her head turned back to the front, and her gaze directed toward the viewer. She wears a pair of earrings and an off-the-shoulder garment made of animal skin. Her long dark hair is parted in the middle and falls down over her back, Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 in. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some of my Hispanic students have commented at one time or another about the problems of having lived in nations (or having relatives in those nations) where there is a mainly Spanish descended ruling class, a more middle group of Spanish/indigenous mix bloods and the indigenous peoples. This is confirmation of what they have told me. Being on the lowest rung makes life difficult and conveys a sense of powerlessness.

I’ll let the article speak for itself.

James Pilant

Indigenous Woman Gives Birth On Hospital Lawn In Mexico After Doctors Denied Her Care

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/09/woman-gives-birth-on-hosp_n_4073416.html

An indigenous woman squats in pain after giving birth, her newborn still bound by the umbilical cord and lying on the ground. It\’s a photograph that horrified Mexicans because of where it took place: the lawn outside a medical clinic where the woman had been denied help, and it struck a nerve in a country where inequity is still pervasive.

The government of the southern state of Oaxaca announced Wednesday that it has suspended the health center\’s director, Dr. Adrian Cruz, while officials conduct state and federal investigations into the Oct. 2 incident.

The mother, Irma Lopez, 29, told The Associated Press that she and her husband were turned away from the health center by a nurse who said she was only eight months pregnant and \”still not ready\” to deliver.

The nurse told her to go outside and walk, and said a doctor could check her in the morning, Lopez said. But an hour and a half later, her water broke, and Lopez gave birth to a son, her third child, while grabbing the wall of a house next to the clinic.

\”I didn\’t want to deliver like this. It was so ugly and with so much pain,\” she said, adding she was alone for the birth because her husband was trying to persuade the nurse to call for help.

A witness took the photo and gave%

via Indigenous Woman Gives Birth On Hospital Lawn In Mexico After Doctors Denied Her Care.

From around the web.

From the web site, Romanwolf’s Blog.

http://romanwolf.wordpress.com/2010/05/04/guatemala/

The film When The Mountain Trembles portrays the interaction between the

U.S. government and the elected Socialist Guatemalan government. In the

scene with the dinner between the president and the U.S. ambassador key

issues such as land reform, structural equality, and Unites States

corporations holding too much land and not paying taxes discussed by the

president and his wife. The Ambassador gets a very troubled look on his

face and states how the U.S is becoming troubled by their activities

and violently calls them “communists”. After the president tries to

explain how all their programs are and how he would feel different if he

spent more time in the country, the Ambassador essentially tells them

that if they don’t stop their reforms and penalties against U.S.

Corporation then there will be trouble. The scene then goes to display

how the U.S. set up a coup against the Guatemalan government in a scene

where a CIA agent says to a Guatemalan General “How Would you like for

us to help your country become a democracy?” The film then zips to

Arbenz surrendering office as the military coup moves in. This video

clearly demonstrates the reasons that provoked U.S. intervention,

nationalization of U.S. assets in the country, structural change that

infringes on U.S economic interests and political actions that make the

U.S. fear for “another Cuba” representing their wishes to deter

Soviet Communism in the Central and South America. …

Stop and Frisk Criticized

NYPD graduation ceremony in Madison Square Gar...
NYPD graduation ceremony in Madison Square Garden, July 2005. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Stop and Frisk as used in New York is in my mind the commission of a series of crimes in the hope of deterring other crime. The New York City Police Department commits crimes by frisking using racial profiling and quotas not legitimate police methods. There is no way you can within the law stop and frisk people based on pigmentation and an arbitrary number of stops while still passing constitutional muster.

 

 

 

But I’m also worried about the effect this has on the individual policeman. If the public is just a series of quota targets to be harassed, searched or arrested, when does doing justice or serving the public come into the question? At what point, does police work become the practice of an occupying military force as opposed to public service? What does this practice do to public perception of police? When does a police department become a military force to be used at the discretion of its leadership (like below)?

 

 

 

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, speaking at

MIT on Wednesday about the city’s workforce, overreached with his

description of the police force which has been lambasted for pepper

spraying protesters lining Wall Street in recent weeks.

 

 

 

‘I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh largest army in the world,’ he said.

 

 

 

If the police are an army to be used at the whim of a mayor, the goals of law enforcement are being threatened by politicization. This is poor policy.

 

 

 

Public trust and cooperation are critical elements in police work. The public is not a single community but a variety of communities based on economics, race and geography. Writing one or two off is bad police work and will have critical long term results.

 

 

 

Stop and frisk as a form of pre-emptive strike against minority crime is clearly unconstitutional.

 

 

 

It needs to end now.

 

 

 

James Pilant

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NYPD Officer Adhyl Polanco Speaks Out Against Stop And Frisk In Video

 

 

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/08/nypd-stop-and-frisk_n_4066335.html

 

 

 

Adhyl Polanco, an officer since 2005, has become an outspoken critic of the NYPD\’s policy, which critics say disproportionately targets blacks and Latinos for police stops. He recorded his supervisors asking beat cops to meet a monthly arrest quota and testified in the recent federal trial that found New York City\’s use of stop and frisk unconstitutional.

 

 

 

\”This is not what I became a cop for,\” Polanco says of stop and frisk in the video, which was produced by the reform advocacy group Communities United for Police Reform and released on YouTube on Monday. \”This is not what I wanted to do.\”

 

 

 

A Vera Institute of Justice study released last month found that the experience of being stopped made New Yorkers less likely to trust the police. New York City is currently appealing a federal judge\’s recent ruling against stop and frisk, which prompted outrage from critics at a Monday rally.

 

 

 

via NYPD Officer Adhyl Polanco Speaks Out Against Stop And Frisk In Video.

 

 

 

From around the web.

 

 

 

From the web site, The Bronx Beat.

 

 

 

http://thebronxbeat.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/stop-and-frisk-intended-for-minorities/

 

 

 

Mayor Bloomberg has always been a strong

supporter of the New York Police Department. After Mayor Bloomberg Came

into office, those stopped and frisked has increased by more than 600%

reported nyclu.com (New York Civil Liberties). He has vetoed two bills

that were supposed to reform the stop and frisk policy that has caught

the attention of so many, especially those of minority groups reported

slate.com

 

 

 

Minority groups have always been the red

dot on the dart board, the scapegoats, the ones to who get slapped in

the head and no one gets punished. Thousands of Latinos and African

Americans are stopped and frisked on a yearly basis; up to 85% according

to slate.com. Mayor Bloomberg is convince that this is a very

productive policy.

 

 

 

The stop and frisk policy is not only

embarrassing but also condescending. Often times the police racially

profile young men on the streets and if they fit a certain description

then they must be guilty of something. The system is meant uphold white

supremacy as long as possible and this scheme of theirs shouldn’t be a

shocker when we recall historical events.

 

 

 

From the web site, The Bronx Beat.

 

 

 

http://thebronxbeat.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/prejudiced-policies/

 

 

 

As he walks home, a man of color is susceptible to be stopped and

frisked by police. Why? Because he simply looks suspicious to them.

Wearing baggy clothing alone could tempt an abusive police officer to

stop him. This man who was stopped can easily be a certified lawyer, a

college student, or even a hardworking father. This man could have been

very busy. However, he patiently waits to ensure that the police collect

evidence of his “unlawful” behavior – which most of the time turn out

to be perfectly legal.

 

 

 

Government abuse like the one mentioned above is a daily routine for

people of color. Whether they like it or not, race remains an essential

element that aids the police to their main targets, and they, whether

they are adults or teenagers, have to live with it.

 

 

 

Blacks, Hispanics and other minority groups who simply look

“threatening” to those stereotyping them have to deal with intrusive

police suspicion. They must endure frequent subway searches that prove

to lessen the amount of street crime and violence in New York State.

 

 

 

From the web site, The Bronx Beat.

 

 

 

http://thebronxbeat.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/stop-and-frisk-colored-people-only/

 

 

 

“Judging by the cover of the book,” A mentality is drawn upon certain

races so when an authority sees that race, already, he or she is

thinking that this person might be doing something illegal.

 

 

 

The Stop and Frisk policy is a policy that over years has caused

problems to many people and their lives. The simple idea of stopping,

when asked to then later being let go because you’re safe is more

embarrassing and hurtful then actually being caught if you had some sort

of bad possession on you. Why do I say this? Because it’s embarrassing

and hurtful to be stopped and frisked because you’re being suspected of

something, the reason being you’re dressed a certain way and/or your

race.

 

 

 

Madoff Friends Face the Music

I always feel a certain element of surprise when the Justice Department acts on an economic crime. Much of the time they pretend it doesn’t exist or tell everyone how hard it is to prosecute. Well, this one is easy; some juicy kills for a prosecutor who will later parley his victories into money. I’m sorry to be cynical but considering the fish they let get away, these guys are not that much. Of course, they do deserve prosecution and I won’t be sorry to see them go to prison

 

English: Bernard Madoff's mugshot
English: Bernard Madoff’s mugshot (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

.

 

It is important for business ethics that there be accountability. But right now, getting caught for financial improprieties is about as likely as getting struck by lightning. That’s not much of a deterrent.

 

James Pilant

 

Bernie Madoff’s colleagues going on trial – Salon.com

 

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/07/bernie_madoffs_colleagues_going_on_trial_newscred/

 

Ponzi scheme fraudster Bernard Madoff claimed he alone orchestrated his $65bn scam – starting tomorrow US prosecutors aim to prove that was another lie.Jury selection starts Tuesday in the case against five of the convicted fraudster’s closest colleagues – all of whom have pleaded not guilty to aiding and abetting Madoff in his scheme.The charges include conspiracy to defraud, securities fraud and falsifying records of a broker-dealer. Madoff is currently serving a 150-year sentence after pleading guilty to fraud following the collapse of his Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities in 2008.Three of the defendants worked for Madoff for decades. Daniel Bonventre, the director of operations for the firm’s back office, started working for Madoff around 1968. Annette Bongiorno, his executive assistant, has known Madoff for over 40 years. Joann Crupi, who managed clients’ investment accounts, worked for Madoff for over 25 years. Also standing trial are computer programmers Jerome O’Hara and George Perez.According to the prosecution Madoff and his accomplises created false records and invented exotic trading schemes to explain the firm’s consistent high returns. In fact “the truth was that Madoff and his co-conspirators – with very rare exception – were not making any trades at all,” the indictment said.

 

via Bernie Madoff’s colleagues going on trial – Salon.com.

 

From around the web.

 

From the web site, Charles Omole’s Nigerian Strategies.

 

(I regard this as a similar situation to that in the United States. jp)

 

http://nigerianstrategies.wordpress.com/2012/08/19/efcc-and-the-magic-of-selective-prosecution/

 

This is a deliberate mess created by the politicians to give
impression they are waging real war on fraud and corruption when in fact
they are only interested in selective prosecution of their opponents.
To restore public confidence; The government should immediately publish
again a clear guidance of when EFCC, ICPC and Nigerian Police can lead
the prosecution of cases. EFCC with its specialised assets, training and
skills should concentrate on major, large and complex crimes only. The
Nigeria police should deal with minor and straightforward financial
crimes. As for ICPC; I am not really sure what value that brings to the
table. It should just be scrapped and EFCC should be strengthened to do
its work.

 

I believe one of the main reasons EFCC has not been as successful as
it should be is the fact that it is becoming jack of all trade and
master of non. It is prosecuting a N100,000 thief and a N100Billion
thief at the same time.  Human nature means many of their staff will be
more interested in the smaller and simpler cases; to be able to raise
their conviction statistics. But that is not why they were established.
EFCC should from now on focus on serious financial crimes and go after
the “big guns” and stop chasing thieving drivers and houseboys.  They
should leave that to the regular police.

 

Hong Kong’s Monster Parents

SVG map of Hong Kong's administrative districts.
SVG map of Hong Kong’s administrative districts. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

I think something similar has been happening here for some time. It’s because of neoliberalism, the doctrine that education is a good to be purchased like a car or a vacation house. We, Americans, strive for an education to get and keep a job forgetting that education has other vital purposes like the creation of whole and vital human beings. The Chinese in Hong Kong also pursue an education for a job but also for social status, and, of course, their system of high school ends in a test that determines who goes to college and who does not. Less than half will qualify. Our testing regime is hideous beyond words but it does not carry that penalty, at least not yet.

 

I have a lot of sympathy for Monster parents. There is unfairness for some students. One of my son’s high school teachers told him that he would never go to college. Since my wife (now ex-wife) and I have two degrees apiece, we thought he probably would go to college (he’s attending one now). I let the matter blow over but there is a part of me that wanted confrontation, a confrontation that teacher would not have forgotten.

 

Still, however sympathetic I may be, I can’t see putting a child through a childhood absent play and solitude.

 

James Pilant 

 

 

The Existential Angst of Hong Kong’s ‘Monster Parents’ | Yuen Chan

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yuen-chan/hong-kong-monster-parents_b_4058306.html

 

For a story about the pressures of early childhood in Hong Kong, my students recently interviewed the mother of a four-year-old who has soccer class on Mondays, piano and violin on Thursdays, extra English and maths on Thursdays and Fridays and music on Saturdays. She was also considering Mandarin and swimming, and all this on top of kindergarten. This may be an extreme case, but there is constant pressure for parents to put their kids on the treadmill and a lucrative industry to promote it.

 

Unsurprisingly, there was much hand-wringing when a survey published by a local university found Hong Kong\’s school children scored higher than those in the United States, Britain and Australia in a questionnaire that detects antisocial traits. Researchers warned that monster parents were creating a generation of over-confident, spoilt brats with a tendency towards aggression and violence to get their way.

 

But it seems too easy to point the finger at parents, simultaneously accused of fostering cowering, over-dependent children and violent narcissists. Parents are trapped in a pressure cooker — an education system that emphasizes academic achievement, as measured in test results, above all else, a culture that deems those without university degrees as failures.

 

What\’s worse, more and more students are attaining the minimum grades needed to qualify to study …(Please visit the web site and read the whole article. jp)

 

via The Existential Angst of Hong Kong’s ‘Monster Parents’ | Yuen Chan.

 

From around the web.

 

From the web site, Education in Japan Community Blog.

 

http://educationinjapan.wordpress.com/parenting-potpourri/monster-parents-and-monster-kids/

 

These days, in Japan at least, there is a great hoo-hah over the

issue of Monster Parents, on the heels of an earlier debate over the

overindulged, selfish and adrift youngsters.

 

These issues are of course not confined to Japan. A quick google on

the internet and you will see that the Monster Parents in India, in the

USA, and the issue of overindulged kids surfaces often in China where

the one-child government policy has resulted in children so precious,

and thus overindulged by society at large. If you ever manage to catch

Super Nanny the British (virtual TV of sorts) series, it’s good for a

jolting confrontation with screaming brats and yelling dads, etc.

 

Nor is the issue as many experts say it is, a phenomenon of our

times. Catching up on a Jane Austen fest on cable TV, and rereading many

Victorian (Regency) classics in the past two weeks, I realized that

“monster parents” and spoilt brats were very much shown up in nearly

every book and often caricatured in ways totally recognizable to us.

 

The Victorian classics were written by young women like Jane Austen

or Charlotte Bronte, who were, being from slightly reduced financial

circumstances, forced to be sensible and to move in the circles of the

clergyhood or governnesses. As such they were highly attuned to the

idiosyncracies, selfish behavioral displays, highhandedness,

snobbishness, vulgarity even, of privileged parents of Victorian high

society…as opposed to the necessary humility, down-to-earthness of the

working or servant classes.

 

The Cyber Schools are Failing

English: Comparison of Charter school performa...
English: Comparison of Charter school performance to public schools. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

And why should anybody have expected anything else? Whose brilliant idea was it to have a cyber school without physical facilities? I teach online and maintain a blog. I don’t know about you but it is hard to stay focused on that keyboard when there are so many other things to do, and I’m an adult with years of education. I can’t imagine doing it as a child. The idea that parents who are often working would be able to supervise their children to stay on the computer for hours each day to take classes boggles the mind. The idea that the discipline and rules of a school necessary to keep children at those tasks could simply be abandoned in the hope of voluntary self education on the part of children was always a bit of a stretch.

It’s not working. Take their state money and send these for-profit failure on their way. We have real schools to fund.

James Pilant

From Junk Bonds to Junk Schools: Cyber Schools Fleece Taxpayers for Phantom Students and Failing Grades | Mary Bottari

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-bottari/online-charter-schools_b_4030954.html?utm_hp_ref=business

The Data Is In: Kids Don\’t Learn Well in Front of Computer Screens

So while the public school system is bleeding money to cyber schools, how are those cyber students doing? Until recently, data on performance of these full-time virtual charters has been scarce. But educators at NEPC started to pull together performance data from multiple states for annual and special reports. They confirmed what many suspected: with rare exceptions, kids don\’t learn sitting in front of a computer all day. Using Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) state data, state performance rankings, and graduation rates, the researchers showed that full-time virtual schools lag significantly behind traditional brick-and-mortar schools. In particular, only 27.7 percent of K12 Inc. online schools met AYP in 2010-2011, compared to 52 percent of public schools. Of the 36 K12 Inc. schools that were assigned a school rating by state education authorities, only seven (19.4 percent) had ratings that clearly indicated satisfactory status. The same study shows that on-time graduation rates are also much lower at online schools than at all public schools on average in the United States: only 37.6 percent of students at virtual high schools graduate on time, whereas the national average for all public high schools is more than doubl

via From Junk Bonds to Junk Schools: Cyber Schools Fleece Taxpayers for Phantom Students and Failing Grades | Mary Bottari.

From around the web.

From the web site, Virtual School Meanderings.

http://virtualschooling.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/problem-with-cyber-charter-schools-pa-nj-edition/

I say interesting for a number of reasons, but one is due to the location.  Cyber charter schools in Pennsylvania (and Ohio for that matter) when they were first created did suffer from many of the problems described in these articles (e.g., lack of oversight, fraud in terms of funding provided for students that didn’t actually attend the cyber charter school, lack of participation in state testing regimes, etc.).  While I believe in both instances (i.e., Pennsylvania and Ohio) that things have gotten much better, I do still believe that within the traditional public education community this early “Wild West” mentality gained them a reputation that they still haven’t been able to shake (and that has followed cyber charter schools to other jurisdictions).

It is also interesting because the main focus of these articles is Pennsylvania.  You see a doctoral student of mine, Abigail Hawkins, and I did a study a couple of years ago looking at what policies K-12 online learning programs had with regards to trial periods (i.e., that period of time a student can try out an online course, drop it and not be counted as being officially enrolled) and how they calculated successful completions.  Note that this study will be published in the American Journal of Distance Education sometime this month. One of the results of that study was a finding that in Pennsylvania the state required that cyber charter schools not have a trial period – that their enrollment data was kept in the same manner as a brick-and-mortar public school (i.e., beginning on the first day of school).  This was the only jurisdiction where this was done.  What this means is that comparisons of completion rates, school performance and student performance can be accurately made between the cyber charter schools and the brick-and-mortar schools in Pennsylvania – and only Pennsylvania – because you are comparing apples to apples.

So let’s do some very basic comparisons.  The Standard of education article lists that there was 1 cyber charter school making AYP, 3 cyber charter schools that were making progress towards meeting AYP, and 7 cyber charter schools not meeting AYP.  When you compare this statewide (and you can get that data here), you get the following:

Type of school Made AYP Making Progress Towards AYP Did Not Meet AYP Total
Cyber Charter Schools 1 (9.1%) 3 (27.3%) 7 (63.7%) 11
Brick-And-Mortar Schools 2290 (73.8%) 149 (4.8%) 665 (21.4%) 3104
Total 2291 (73.5%) 152 (4.9%) 672 (21.6%) 3115

The numbers don’t look particularly good for the cyber charter school community.  I should note that it would be a much better comparison is you could compare the overall student data – which I’ve never done for Pennsylvania – although it would make a nice dissertation project because of the whole apples to apples thing.

Literature Promotes Insight

I firmly believe that literature is a guide to how other people think, an insight into how other minds differ from yours. I recommend to my business students that they take classes in art, science and literature. Business courses prepare you for business problems. Liberal arts prepare you to live a life of meaning and purpose.

 

Of course, my students don’t read enough. Oh, they do, if you count their social media and the powerpoints they see in class but real reading is tackling college level text for more than five minutes. That kind of reading develops brain power, and according to the study here referenced, an enhanced ability to empathize and understand others.

 

James Pilant

 

Statue, Tomsk. "Anton Pavlovich in Tomsk—...
Statue, Tomsk. “Anton Pavlovich in Tomsk—drunkard’s view, lying in a ditch, who never read Kashtanka” Print issues, Siberia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Jonathan Franzen can help you read people – Salon.com

 

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/06/literary_fiction_helps_us_read_people_partner/

 

Beach reading season is over, so it’s time to plunge into some serious fiction. But if the idea of plowing through a Pynchon feels a bit too much like work, here’s a piece of news that may inspire you: Doing so may help you better discern the beliefs, motivations, and emotions of those around you.That’s the conclusion of a just-published study by two scholars from the New School for Social Research in New York. David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano report that reading literature uniquely boosts “the capacity to identify and understand others’ subjective states.”Literary fiction, they note in the journal Science, “uniquely engages the psychological processes needed to gain access to characters’ subjective experiences.” Unlike most popular fiction, which “tends to portray the world and its characters as internally consistent and predictable,” these works require readers to contend with complex, sometimes contradictory characters.According to Kidd and Castano, this sort of active engagement increases our ability to understand and appreciate the similarly complicated people we come across in real life.The researchers provide evidence for their thesis in the form of five experiments, all of which were conducted online. In the first, the 86 participants read either a short literary work (by Chekhov, Don DeLillo, or …

 

(Please visit the web site and read the whole article! jp)

 

via Jonathan Franzen can help you read people – Salon.com.

 

From around the web.

 

From the web site, Stephanie’s Wicked Awesome Words.

 

http://myotts.wordpress.com/2007/02/24/the-importance-of-classic-literature/

 

The great writers of the classics were masters in their craft. They
knew how to write well and effectively, and how to compose pieces that
would continue to instill wisdom centuries into the future. In other
subjects, such as chemistry, calculus, and history, students study those
people who were masters in these fields. They concentrate on gleaning
knowledge from those who were the most accomplished and had the most to
offer. Why should literature study be any different? Although YA
literature is a good device to get children interested in reading, it
should not be the main focus of study in the classroom. In general, YA
literature does not have the universal appeal or level of skill that
classic literature does. That would be equivalent to history teachers
teaching their students only about the lives of ordinary people rather
than those of people like Napoleon, Washington, or King, Jr. That would
be equivalent to chemistry teachers teaching their students only about
experiments conducted in high school labs, and not about scientists and
discoveries that have changed the world. Classic literature has a place
in the classroom, one that should be revered and never substitued with
work that is simply mediocre.

 

From the web site, Writings by Abhishek.

 

http://pravimalabhishek.wordpress.com/2010/02/19/literature-and-its-importance-in-our-lives/

 

Tim Gillespie in one of his essays to ‘The English Journal’ says, “We
rightly worry that many youngsters lives are circumscribed by poverty,
discrimination, low expectations, cultural insularity, and other
conditions that may render them unable to see beyond the limits of their
immediate horizons. Literature does offer-inexpensively-a vision of
other lives and other vistas. One of its potential benefits is to
enlarge a reader’s sense about the many possible ways to live. This
enlarged sense seems to me an important part of our traditional national
ethos. Hope for a better world and belief in the possibility of
re-making oneself or improving one’s situation breed optimism and elbow
grease. We have rich testimony of this imaginative function of
literature. ”


The ability of literature to provoke its reader to imagine is
generalized in the above sentences. What I mean to say is that
literature of any kind has a generalized power to make the reader
imagine things. Of course, Tim throws more light on living life in
various ways and imagining situations that one cannot experience but
literature of any kind, whether a science textbook or a novel makes the
reader to imagine. This power of imagination deepens the intellectual
quotient of a person.

 

“The tale’s the thing, for every generation”

 

Fracking and 280 Billion Gallons of Toxic Waste Water

English: toxic waste sign Italiano: segnale pe...
English: toxic waste sign Italiano: segnale per rifiuti speciali (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have to wonder if this is not one of the great business ethics issues of our time. Fracking is in many ways protected from federal regulation and the energy companies generous campaign contributions (thanks to Citizens United) have warped state regulations and even the tax laws in favor of the frackers.

I can’t help but think that there could have been protections or developments in process that would have made these methods of exploration safer for the environment. We need the feds on the job. I don’t believe we can look to the industry for our protection. Their press releases have been little but the usual work of corporate PR flacks. That kind of media and public manipulation became obvious a long time ago.

Fracking should be done only with effective regulation both state and federal. What part of American history can lead one to believe in self-regulation? How about the patent medicine companies with their laudanum and opiates? How about investment banks and the great collapse of the first decade of the 21st century? Or simply, the history of the petroleum industry itself, leaks in the Alaska pipeline, a long series of tanker disasters and a little problem called the Gulf Oil Spill? What of this give you confidence that fracking is safe and harmless.

I tell you with confidence that in a few years, fracking will be in every business ethics textbook as a cautionary tale of an industry making its own calls on the safety of the public.

James Pilant

Fracking produces annual toxic waste water enough to flood Washington DC | Environment | theguardian.com

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/04/fracking-us-toxic-waste-water-washington

Fracking in America generated 280bn US gallons of toxic waste water last year – enough to flood all of Washington DC beneath a 22ft deep toxic lagoon, a new report out on Thursday found.The report from campaign group Environment America said America’s transformation into an energy superpower was exacting growing costs on the environment.”Our analysis shows that damage from fracking is widespread and occurs on a scale unimagined just a few years ago,” the report, Fracking by the Numbers, said.The full extent of the damage posed by fracking to air and water quality had yet to emerge, the report said.But it concluded: “Even the limited data that are currently available, however, paint an increasingly clear picture of the damage that fracking has done to our environment and health.”

via Fracking produces annual toxic waste water enough to flood Washington DC | Environment | theguardian.com.

From around the web.

From the web site,

http://lewesagainstfracking.wordpress.com/2013/09/07/united-nations-global-environmental-alert-on-fracking/

In November of last year the United Nations released a ‘Global Environmental Alert’ on the risks that fracking poses to public health and the environment. In it they state:

While offering economic and energy security benefits, UG (unconventional gas) production presents considerable environmental risks. These range from potential water and soil contamination from surface leaks or from improperly designed well-casing, to spills of improperly treated water, increased competition for water usage, and fugitive emissions of gas with implications for the global climate…air pollution from volatile contaminants, noise pollution, negative impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity losses and landscape disruption.’

Read the full report here….UN Report

Internet Freedom Slipping

Internet Censorship Scenario in Europe
Internet Censorship Scenario in Europe (Photo credit: Analectic.org)

This is very bad news indeed.

Much of the media in the United States is not to be trusted or not doing their job. And because of this the Internet while infested with danger is the new media that carries the weight of intellectual and significant thought and story telling.

The government and corporate power do not like a free internet. It is very sad indeed to see the United States with its claims of being a great free society establishing a truly incredible surveillance operation covering every aspect of the internet.

They have usurped Americans’ privacy with no penalty and little oversight.

But America is a great nation and we can hope the wheel turns round and that there will be change.

But the current crisis is important to business ethics for without an open internet, one avenue of corporate accountability is foreclosed. There are not enough counterweights to corporate wrong doing. Losing this one could be devastating.

James Pilant

Internet freedom in ‘global decline,’ report finds | Al Jazeera America

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/10/3/report-shows-declineininternetfreedomin35countries.html

Internet freedom in countries around the world has declined sharply in the past year despite a pushback from activists that successfully blocked some governments’ repressive laws, according to a new report.

The study, by advocacy group Freedom House, looked at online trends in 60 countries, evaluating each nation them based on obstacles to access, limits to content and violations of user rights. It found that in 35 of the countries monitored, governments had expanded their legal and technical surveillance powers in regards to citizen’s online activities.

“Broad surveillance, new laws controlling web content and growing arrests of social media users drove a worldwide decline in Internet freedom in the past year,” the authors of the report concluded.

Of the countries included in the research, Iceland came top in terms of giving its citizens the highest level of freedom. China, Cuba and Iran were listed as the most restrictive for a second consecutive year. The report noted that declines in online freedom in three democracies – Brazil, India and the United States – were “especially troubling”.

Revelations by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden have ignited a global debate about the U.S. government’s domestic surveillance activities, and the report says the changes in U.S. online …

(Please go to the site and read the whole article.)

via Internet freedom in ‘global decline,’ report finds | Al Jazeera America.

From around the web.

From the web site,

http://paolatubaro.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/internet-freedom-and-censorship/

I participated today in a panel discussion at Voice of Russia London, on freedom of Web speech – the future of the Internet, possible restraints, what is and isn’t currently allowed. My angle was that on the unintended effects of censorship, based on research I have done in the last few years.

You may remember our ICCU (Internet Censorship and Civil Unrest) study, which I started with Antonio A. Casilli
during the summer 2011 English riots. We looked at the potential
effects on civil violence of restrictions to access to the Internet
–considered, though eventually not implemented, by the government.
Leaving aside issues of technical feasibility and legal and ethical
acceptability, would net censorship work? Would it stop the violence?

We show
that it wouldn’t. Its effect would be to interrupt coordination of both
unlawful agitation and community pacification efforts, if not even
policing: so neither “positive” nor “negative” social influences, so to
speak, would display their effects. Censorship doesn’t reduce the level of violence, but changes its pattern.
Specifically, it generates a steadily high level of violence, while its
absence produces only “picks” of violence, with periods of social peace
between them.

We conclude that Internet censorship is
ineffective and inefficient: its social cost (in terms of giving up
freedom of speech) is too high for such meagre results.

American Media Fail to Cover Poverty

English: This is a figure illustrating the dif...
English: This is a figure illustrating the different rates of poverty by sex for Americans over 65 in 2006. It is based on Statistical Abstract data. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The American Media’s failure to cover poverty as a topic is morally wrong and a failure of business ethics. First, they have an obligation to cover important subjects as part of their duty as a functioning press. They are one of the balancing mechanisms that make democracy work. Second, they are ill-serving their largest stake holders, the consumers of news by providing them with a distorted view of reality. “If it bleeds it leads,” isn’t journalism, it’s entertainment and very poor entertainment. Thirdly, they have a duty to themselves to act responsibly as human beings and to leave a legacy for others.

 

Failure to deal intelligently and with an appropriate level of coverage of controversial topics is a business ethics failure.

 

James Pilant

 

About 15% of Americans live in poverty, so why is no one talking about it? | Daniel A Medina | Comment is free | theguardian.com

 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/05/american-media-ignores-poverty-issues

 

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that out of 52 mainstream media outlets analysed, coverage of poverty amounted to less than 1% of available news space from 2007 to 2012. It’s even more astonishing considering that period covered a historic recession. One of the report’s conclusions was that media organizations chose not to cover poverty because it was potentially uncomfortable to advertisers seeking to reach a wealthy consumer audience. As Barbara Ehrenreich, who contributes articles on social issues for Time Magazine, put it:They don’t want really depressing articles about misery and hardship near their ads.Poverty coverage is seen as non-lucrative, time-consuming and involves high levels of commitment that editors are unwilling to give their reporters in this age of newsroom budget tightening. The greatest irony, however, is that poverty, as Tampa Bay Times media critic, Eric Deggans, told The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard earlier this year “is in some ways the ultimate accountability story – because, often, poverty happens by design”.

 

(Please visit the link and read the whole article.)

 

via About 15% of Americans live in poverty, so why is no one talking about it? | Daniel A Medina | Comment is free | theguardian.com.

From around the web.

From the web site, Poverty and Policy.

http://povertyandpolicy.wordpress.com/2013/09/23/moving-beyond-trayvon-martin-to-issues-of-economic-injustice/

Dr. Martin Luther King opened his famous March on Washington speech by proclaiming that “the Negro is still not free…. [He] lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast sea of material prosperity.”

 

This is still true 50 years later for 28% of blacks, Gutting says, citing last year’s official poverty figure. And the root cause is the way our free enterprise system works.

 

It’s geared primarily toward enabling individuals to amass personal wealth. And them’s what has gets, at the expense of them’s what don’t.

 

The end result is “a socioeconomic underclass deprived of the basic goods necessary for a fulfilling human life: adequate food, housing, health care and education, as well as meaningful and secure employment.”

 

Gutting asserts that “people should be free to pursue their happiness in the competitive market” — an odd conflation of happiness and riches.

 

But, he continues, “it makes no sense to require people to compete in the market for basic goods” because if they don’t have them, they’ve “little chance of gaining them in competition” with those that do.

 

We’ve got scads of evidence for this. For example, we’ve got research showing that more than 40% of children raised in the bottom fifth of the income scale stay there as adults — and more than half if they’re black.

 

And other studies showing that children of wealthy parents start kindergarten ahead of the pack — and stay there, while a very large number of poor children start with disadvantages that cause them to fall further and further behind.

 

And data showing that even the poor kids who make it through high school are far less likely to go on to college — and less likely to graduate if they do. Costs and other financial pressures are, for blacks, the single most important reason, according to yet other research. And probably not for them only.

From the web site,

Adenike Adebayo

Issues of great importance to me as an Economist.

http://nikeadebayo.wordpress.com/poverty-income-inequality-student-achievement/

FINDINGS

 

Income Inequality

 

Pearson’s correlation coefficient (Table 1) for income inequality and TIMSS math test score shows a negative relationship -.655 at a significance level of .002 (p<. 01) where math test score decreases with higher income inequality (or lower income equality). The relationship between income inequality and science is also negative -.631 at a significance level of .004 (p<. 05) where science test score decreases with increased inequality of income (or with decreased equality of income). Income inequality has very little relationship with government spending on primary and secondary education. Child poverty rates are significantly and positively correlated to income inequality at .787, .792 and .742 with significance levels of .000, .000 and .001.

From the web site, Health Voices.

http://povertybadforhealth.wordpress.com/2013/09/18/income-inequality-no-big-deal-according-to-economists/

In North America, the Occupy movement cast the spotlight on an issue that has been the focus of grave concern around the world – income inequality. So the media flurry that came with the release of Statistics Canada’s latest report on the Income of Canadians (September 11, 2013) was no surprise. CBC’s Kelowna-based Daybreak South (September 12, 2013) and the CBC national show, The 180 (September 13, 2013), are two examples that featured leading economists, both of whom were completely uninformed of the health, social and even the economic costs of income inequality.

 

The numbers simply confirm what we all know – the rich are getting richer, leaving the rest of us behind. At an average of $381,000 each, the richest 1% of Canadians earn more than ten times the average Canadian income. More than the numbers, though, it is the response from leading economists that is troubling for the future of our country.

 

Is Grand Theft Auto Unethical?

Grand Theft Auto (film)
Grand Theft Auto (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Of course it is.

You steal cars and commit crimes. It’s a shrine to mindless violence and slaughter. People, even children, should know better. It’s not hard to pick up the meaning in games and decide whether or not you should go along. I used to play the original Fallout game. One of the add-ons provided me with an adventure in which I could end the scenario successfully by doing one of two horrendously unethical things. Those two were my only choices. For you aficionados, it was kidnap the child or join the evil guy. I refused to make that choice. I started a new game and never played that part of it again.

I currently play Fallout New Vegas. I teach ethics. I play as a hero. Nothing else is possible. You fight for the right and if the cause is just, you may have to die for it. There are moral ambiguities but I enjoy them because in this arena I can experiment and see what the outcomes would be of my actions, something denied me in real life.

I understand the occasional need to experiment with the dark side, but as far as I can tell, Grand Theft Auto is the dark side. I don’t think it is good business ethics to buy or play it.

Moral choices are important even in video games.

James Pilant

“Grand Theft Auto V”: Gaming’s dark misogynist cesspool – Salon.com

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/04/were_all_gamers_now_and_thats_just_fine/

I kind of know what Bissell is talking about. I am familiar with cesspool, reflective of so much of the Internet’s worst misogynist, homophobic and racist tendencies. That “internalized residual shame” is one reason why I personally gave up gaming. Solitary play, hacking and slashing, mowing down opponents in a rage of slaughter, just didn’t seem physically or mentally healthy. So I packed it in. Now I worry about what all the time my son spends gaming might be doing to him. Hell, I worry about what a generation growing up on ubiquitous, amazingly immersive gaming will do to the culture at large. Something, surely? A billion dollars was just spent in three days on a game whose structure encourages random violence and brutality. That can’t be good.And yet, at the same time, I don’t know what Bissell is talking about at all. Video gaming culture should not, cannot, be reduced to young men screaming profanities as they play “Grand Theft Auto V” on their dedicated consoles. Gaming, today, encompasses much, much more. My son and his friends spend hours in the cooperative, creative world-building domain of “Minecraft,” or chuckling their way through humor-drenched indie games like “Don’t Starve” (“An uncompromising wilderness survival game full

via “Grand Theft Auto V”: Gaming’s dark misogynist cesspool – Salon.com.

From around the web.

From the web site,

http://breakfastwithspock.wordpress.com/2013/09/05/after-the-war-i-thought-nothing-of-doing-bad-things-a-grand-theft-auto-iv-retrospective-part-1/

Grand Theft Auto is the ultimate male escapist fantasy. Grounded in a heightened reality of prostitutes, car chases and sweltering machismo, the series gives the player the ability to assert authority and control at the barrel of a gun. With only two weeks left until the release of Grand Theft Auto V, I stepped back into this world by replaying the previous entry, Grand Theft Auto IV and looking at a game which defined a console generation and offers clues to the next step. I’ll be trying to focus on some of the game’s elements and themes in each new post and how each worked together to create one of the most important games of this console generation.

From the web site –

Home to Reflections, Opinions, and Beer Reviews.

http://mthrisho.wordpress.com/2013/10/03/grand-theft-auto-v-innovative-mechanics-bad-writing/

When the game starts and we’re introduced to the characters, everything seems very fluid and interesting. After a brief and intense bank robbery to introduce us to the mechanics both old and new, we launch to Michael in his therapist’s office doing a wonderful Tony Soprano impression. The focus then quickly shifts to Franklin, who is walking by on the street and asks Michael for direction. From here the game’s story begins as we learn Franklin is a repo man for a car dealership, as well as a sometimes gangster. Franklin meets Michael while attempting to repossess his son’s car, and Michael offers to help him find ‘real work.’ We meet Trevor, Michael’s old bank robbing partner, after Franklin and Michael rob a jewelry store. This is where we learn that Michael had faked his death after the opening sequence, and is now in hiding, with Trevor setting out to find him while working on his own ‘business enterprise.’

From there the game expands into more heists, some government intrigue, and figuring out exactly what happened years ago between Trevor and Michael. While all of this is interesting, in a sense of the word, it never fully engages us in a solid narrative. In fact, there’s still plenty of ‘story missions’ after the main tension between Trevor and Michael comes to a head. Sadly though, a solid resolution never really comes about. Until the last few minutes of the game, Trevor still pretty much hates Michael and with very good reason.

From the web site, The Grand Theft Auto Blog.

http://thegrandtheftautoblog.wordpress.com/

The series is set in fictional locales heavily modelled on American cities, while an expansion for the original was based in London. Gameplay focuses on an open world where the player can choose missions to progress an overall story, as well as engaging in side activities, all consisting of action-adventuredriving, occasional role-playingstealth, and racingelements. The subject of the games is usually a comedic satire of American culture, but the series has gained controversy for its adult nature and violent themes. The series focuses around many different protagonists who attempt to rise through the ranks of the criminal underworld, although their motives for doing so vary in each game. The antagonists are commonly characters who have betrayed the protagonist or his organisation, or characters who have the most impact impeding the protagonist’s progress.