Group items tagged

The NAACP has just passed a historic resolution demanding an end to the War on Drugs.  The resolution comes as young Black male unemployment hovers near 50 percent and the wealth gap's become a veritable gulf. So why is the forty-year-old "War on Drugs" public enemy number one for the nation's oldest civil rights organization? Well here's why:  it's not extraneous - it's central: the war on drugs is the engine of 21st century discrimination - an engine that has brought Jim Crow into the age of Barack Obama.     Author Michelle Alexander lays out the statistics -- and the stories --  of 21st Century Jim Crow in her ought-to-blow-your-socks off book: "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness." I had a chance to sit down with Alexander earlier this summer. We'll be posting the full interview in two parts.     "We have managed decades after the civil rights movement to create something like a caste system in the United States," says Alexander in part one here  "In major urban areas, the majority of African American men are either behind bars, under correctional control or saddled with criminal record and once branded as criminal or a felon, they're trapped for life in 2nd class status."     It's not just about people having a hard time getting ahead and climbing the ladder of success. It's about a rigged system. Sound familiar?  Like the Pew Research Center report on household wealth and the Great Recession -- the NAACP resolution story was a one-day news-blip - despite the fact that it pierces the by-your-bootstraps myth that is at the heart of - you pick it - the deficit, the stimulus, the tax code - every contemporary US economic debate.     White America just maybe ought to pay attention. With more and more Americans falling out of jobs and into debt, criminal records are a whole lot easier to come by than life-sustaining employment.  Contrary to the conventional media version, the "Drug War" story is not a people with problems

JOE BIDEN THINKS IT'S THE 20TH CENTURY: FOR YOU LIBERALS, HE'S YOUR VICE PRESIDENT AND IT'S THE 21ST CENTRUY!

President Obama has identified cybersecurity as one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation, but one that we as a government or as a country are not adequately prepared to counter. Shortly after taking office, the President therefore ordered a thorough review of federal efforts to defend the U.S. information and communications infrastructure and the development of a comprehensive approach to securing America's digital infrastructure. In May 2009, the President accepted the recommendations of the resulting Cyberspace Policy Review, including the selection of an Executive Branch Cybersecurity Coordinator who will have regular access to the President. The Executive Branch was also directed to work closely with all key players in U.S. cybersecurity, including state and local governments and the private sector, to ensure an organized and unified response to future cyber incidents; strengthen public/private partnerships to find technology solutions that ensure U.S. security and prosperity; invest in the cutting-edge research and development necessary for the innovation and discovery to meet the digital challenges of our time; and begin a campaign to promote cybersecurity awareness and digital literacy from our boardrooms to our classrooms and begin to build the digital workforce of the 21st century. Finally, the President directed that these activities be conducted in a way that is consistent with ensuring the privacy rights and civil liberties guaranteed in the Constitution and cherished by all Americans.

On May 5, 2010, Senators Mark Pryor (AR) and John Kerry (MA) introduced the "Equal Access to 21st Century Communications Act" (S. 3304). Senators Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad, both from North Dakota, also co-sponsored the bill.

Avoiding a World War Between Haves and Have Nots Via Focus on Transnational Infrastructure, Technocratic Management, and Post-scarcity (via Expanded Bill of Rights)

The supply of secure, clean, sustainable energy is arguably the most important scientific and technical challenge facing humanity in the 21st century. Rising living standards of a growing world population will cause global energy consumption to double by mid-century and triple by the end of the century. Even in light of unprecedented conservation, the additional energy needed is simply not attainable from long discussed sources these include nuclear, biomass, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric. The global appetite for energy is simply too much. Petroleum-based fuel sources (i.e., coal, oil and gas) could be increased. However, deleterious consequences resulting from external drivers of economy, the environment, and global security dictate that this energy need be met by renewable and sustainable sources. The dramatic increase in global energy need is driven by 3 billion low-energy users in the non-legacy world and by 3 billion people yet to inhabit the planet over the next half century. The capture and storage of solar energy at the individual level personalized solar energy drives inextricably towards the heart of this energy challenge by addressing the triumvirate of secure, carbon neutral and plentiful energy. This talk will place the scale of the global energy issue in perspective and then discuss how personalized energy (especially for the non-legacy world) can provide a path to a solution to the global energy challenge. Daniel G. Nocera is the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Director of the Solar Revolutions Project and Director of the Eni Solar Frontiers Center at MIT. His group pioneered studies of the basic mechanisms of energy conversion in biology and chemistry. He has recently accomplished a solar fuels process that captures many of the elements of photosynthesis outside of the leaf. This discovery sets the stage for a storage mechanism for the large scale, distributed, deployment of solar energy. He has b

'By simply creating a new WPA-style jobs program we could lower the unemployment rate by several points, rebuild 20th-century infrastructure and accommodate the needs of a 21st-century society. But until we come together to elect leaders that will take that step, all we can do is pray. Maybe Rick Perry can help out with that.

Faces from the Great Crash of 1929 and its aftermath are haunting the 21st century. Wall Street brokers fleeing the trading floor in panic, or putting their cars on sale because they are suddenly broke, appear in old black-and-white photographs beside analyses of the current state of the markets composed by sombre authorities. Not only the collapse of confidence that shattered investors 82 years ago but the long years of misery that followed now seem to call out to us, to warn us, to show us a truth that is urgent and immediate. Can this really be so? Can that nightmare history be repeating itself?

Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed, In fresh episode of Meray Mutabiq Talk With Ansar Abbasi Investigation Analyst, Rauf Klasra Analyst, Salhiya Zafar Sen. Analyst.

Salman Taseer Governor Punjab, in fresh episode of Off The Record Discussing Current Issue With Kashif Abbasi.

Najam ud din Sheikh (Former Foreign Secretary), Lt Gen Talat Masood (Analyst) and Dr. Farooq Hasnaat (Analyst) in fresh episode of Islamabad Tonight & discusses current issues with Nadeem Malik.

Kamran Khan presents another fresh episode of Aaj Kamran Khan Kay Saath in Geo TV and talked with Hussain Haqani Pakistani Ambassador in USA, Dr. Rasul Bakhsh Rais and Tariq Iqbal Khan.

Barrister Ch. Aitzaz Ahsan Former PSCBA and Justice (R) Malik M. Qayyum Former Attorney General in fresh episode of Kal Tak discussing situation of Rule of law in the country with Javed Chaudhry.

Fouzia Wahab PPP, Khawaja Saad Rafique PML-N and Qazi Hussain Ahmed Ameer JI in fresh episode of Off The Record and Discussing Current Issues With Kashif Abbasi.

Syed Talat Hussain in fresh episode of Live with Talat. Talking with youths including students of different Universities of Peshawar and their opinion regarding issues facing by the country.

Ghazala MinAllah, Dr. Donia Aziz, Asam Arbab Alamgir PPP and Tahira Aurangzaib PML-N in Special episode of Capital Talk and discusses with Hamid Mir.