from AlterNet:


Outrageous Attacks on Supporters of Church-State Separation: Death Threats, Murdered Pets, and Vandalized Property


When it comes to the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment, which forbids the establishment of a state religion by the government even if a majority supports it, is something most of us heartedly support.

But not all. The religious right despises the First Amendment, since it's constantly foiled their efforts to inject Christian doctrine into government. And when they've lost in court, religious conservatives in the U.S. have often waged campaigns of threats, harassment and outright violence against First Amendment plaintiffs, in the hopes of intimidating them into backing down and achieving by mob violence what they can't achieve under the law.

Last year, the Freedom from Religion Foundation contacted two public school districts in Pennsylvania, in New Kensington and Connellsville, to demand the removal of large stone Ten Commandments monuments prominently placed on school property. When the schools chose to fight, the FFRF and its local plaintiffs, including current students, filed a lawsuit.

As often happens in these cases, FFRF plaintiffs asked to have their identities concealed because they feared harassment and retaliation from the community. It was a well-founded fear, since some of them had already been receiving threats on social media. On a Facebook page supporting the New Kensington school, one person encouraged others to "slam the shit out of the bitch" who filed the lawsuit. Another commenter asked, "Have the families involved in the lawsuit been identified? I cannot believe anyone living in the community would participate in such a worthless cause. Someone needs to send that group back to Wisconsin with several black eyes!" ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/belief/outrageous-attacks-supporters-church-state-separation-death-threats-murdered-pets-and

(Globe and Mail) Norway is ranked No. 1 in the world for productivity, measured by GDP per total hours worked, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Canada comes 17th, behind Spain.

Many variables affect productivity, and Norway’s high oil production contributes significantly to its GDP, and therefore productivity.

“However, even after controlling for the rent (profits) from natural resources, Norway has high productivity. And more importantly, our relative productivity has increased a lot from the early 1990s to 2011, even after adjusting for natural resource rents,” explains Adne Cappelen, an economist at Statistics Norway.

Mr. Cappelen attributes Norway’s high productivity to four main factors:

1. A more educated work force, largely enabled by free university tuition;

2. Outsourcing low-wage, low-productivity labour;

3.Maximizing participation in the work force for skilled workers, (providing social support and flexible work for seniors and new parents);

4. Equal distribution of income.

............................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/canada-competes/what-universal-child-care-does-for-norway/article11959366/

Published on May 18, 2013

In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert examine stories about those who, using spoof trades, bogus securities and fictitious capital, steal real wealth and income. They discuss how it is that every benchmark index is rigged and introduce the concept of the 'bonus benchmark.' In the second half, Max talks to Dr. Michael Hudson, author of The Bubble and Beyond, about debt and wage deflation and about the intersection of interest rates and wages going back to David Ricardo when wages were measured against the price of bread to today when they are measured against the price of debt.

from Consortium News:


Reagan and Argentina’s Dirty War
May 17, 2013

Exclusive: The 87-year-old ex-Argentine dictator Jorge Videla died Friday in prison where he was serving sentences for grotesque human rights crimes in the 1970s and 1980s. But one of Videla’s key backers, the late President Ronald Reagan, continues to be honored by Americans, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry


The death of ex-Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, a mastermind of the right-wing state terrorism that swept Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, means that one more of Ronald Reagan’s old allies is gone from the scene.

Videla, who fancied himself a theoretician of anti-leftist repression, died in prison at age 87 after being convicted of a central role in the Dirty War that killed some 30,000 people and involved kidnapping the babies of “disappeared” women so they could be raised by military officers who were often implicated in the murders of the mothers.

The leaders of the Argentine junta also saw themselves as pioneers in the techniques of torture and psychological operations, sharing their lessons with other regional dictatorships. Indeed, the chilling word “disappeared” was coined in recognition of their novel tactic of abducting dissidents off the streets, torturing them and then murdering them in secret – sometimes accomplishing the task by chaining naked detainees together and pushing them from planes over the Atlantic Ocean.

With such clandestine methods, the dictatorship could leave the families in doubt while deflecting international criticism by suggesting that the “disappeared” might have traveled to faraway lands to live in luxury, thus combining abject terror with clever propaganda and disinformation. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2013/05/17/reagan-and-argentinas-dirty-war/

....... Who is arming the doggies?

David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz on Toxic Disinformation
May 17, 2013

Science can be a battleground — witness the politics of climate change, the teaching of evolution, the uncharted terrain of genetic modification and stem cell research, among other contentious issues. But when industries release untested chemicals into our environment — putting profits before public health — our children are the first to suffer. Nowhere is this more troubling than in the ongoing story of lead poisoning.

Bill talks with David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, public health historians who’ve been taking on the chemical industry for years — writing about the hazards of industrial pollution and the neglect of worker safety — despite industry efforts to undermine them. Their latest book, Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and the Fate of America’s Children, is the culmination of 20 years of research. Markowitz and Rosner warn that, for young children, there’s no safe level of exposure to this dangerous toxin still lurking in millions of homes.

The authors discuss thwarted efforts to hold the lead industry accountable, failed attempts to find cheap solutions, and the cost to the future of our children. As long as the chemical industry and its powerful lobbies prevail in blocking efforts to reform outdated laws, Markowitz and Rosner say, we will continue to float in a soup of toxins — inhaling, drinking, and absorbing chemicals that we may learn, years later, have put us all in harm’s way.


http://billmoyers.com/segment/david-rosner-and-gerald-markowitz-on-toxic-disinformation/

(In These Times) With a workforce of more than one million, the electronics giant Foxconn has enough workers in its Chinese factories to fill a small country. So it's fitting that the company has vowed to make its manufacturing kingdom a bit more democratic by encouraging union elections.

But although the company announced its push for union democracy in February, a subsequent study by academics in Hong Kong and mainland China reveals that many workers don’t even know whether they’re in a union, and many others don’t have a clear idea of what their union does or how it works. And that actually makes perfect sense, since China’s unions are ill-defined, bureaucratized institutions—politically ineffective by design.

The union plan is part of a host of promised reforms that followed public scrutiny of Foxconn's premiere client, Apple. The Apple brand has come under fire from advocacy groups and the media for profiting from the exploitation of young Foxconn workers—underscored by a series of employee suicides stretching from 2010 to just a few weeks ago.

As Working In These Times noted when the plan was announced in February, the idea of “democratizing” unions at Foxconn should be viewed skeptically since official unions are linked to the state-controlled All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), which tends to collude with employers in ignoring or suppressing autonomous labor action. ............................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/15008/foxconns_union_democracy_fail/

Professor Richard Wolff discusses a variety of topics, from the truth about the "recovery" to diminished prospects for college grads to the Bangladesh factory fire.

By Steven Hsieh
May 10, 2013 10:00 AM ET


(Rolling Stone) There's a fire burning in Bridgeton, Missouri. It's invisible to area residents, buried deep beneath the ground in a North St. Louis County landfill. But the smoldering waste is an unavoidable presence in town, giving off a putrid odor that clouds the air miles away – an overwhelming stench described by one area woman as "rotten eggs mixed with skunk and fertilizer." Residents report smelling it at K-12 school buses, a TGI Fridays and even the operating room of a local hospital. "It smells like dead bodies," observes another local.

On a Saturday morning in March, one mile south of the landfill, several Bridgeton residents have gathered at a small home in a blue-collar subdivision called Spanish Village. Concerned citizens Karen Nickel and Dawn Chapman are here to answer questions posed by four of their neighbors. "How will I ever sell my house?" "Am I going to end up with cancer 20 years down the road?" "Is there even a solution?"

In February, the landfill's owner, Republic Services, sent glossy fliers to residents within stink radius claiming the noxious odor posed no safety risk. But official reports say otherwise. Temperature probes reveal the fire has already surpassed normal heat levels. Reports from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) indicate dangerously high levels of benzene and hydrogen sulfide in the air. In March, Missouri's Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) – which has jurisdiction over Bridgeton Landfill – quietly posted an Internet notice cautioning citizens with chronic respiratory diseases to limit time outdoors. A month after Republic distributed its potentially misleading flier, the state attorney general sued the company on eight counts of environmental violations, including pollution and public nuisance. And this week, as part of a settlement set to be announced Tuesday, Republic sent another round of fliers offering to move local families to hotels during a period of increased odor related to remediation efforts.

Nickel and Chapman are stay-at-home moms; Chapman has three special-needs kids. Neither of them wants to spend her time worrying about a damn landfill fire. But until someone higher up the power chain intervenes, they have sworn to call municipal offices, file Sunshine requests and post notices to the community's Facebook group, no matter how unsettling the facts they uncover. Scariest of all: The Bridgeton landfill fire is burning close to at least 8,700 tons of nuclear weapons wastes. .............................(more)

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/st-louis-is-burning-20130510#ixzz2TegZpbeE

Rob Ford crack scandal: Time for mayor to step down: Editorial
It’s time for Toronto Mayor Rob Ford to do the right thing for the city, and himself, and step down.


Enough is enough. It’s time for Toronto Mayor Rob Ford to do the right thing for the city, and himself, and step down.

All day Friday, while the city absorbed the news that drug dealers have been shopping a cellphone video that appears to show Ford smoking crack cocaine about town, the mayor had every chance to refute these extraordinary allegations. Allies and critics alike on city council called on him urgently to deal with them head on.

In the end, all he had to offer were two sentences uttered in passing as he was hustled past a throng of reporters. It’s “ridiculous,” he said. It’s “the Toronto Star going after me” again. “And that’s all I have to say.”

Sorry, Mr. Mayor. The cloud over the city’s top executive is large and dark. It needs to be cleared, and if that’s all you’ve got to say, it’s not going to do the job. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2013/05/18/rob_ford_crack_scandal_time_for_mayor_to_step_down_editorial.html