Bob Dole is an interesting man and definitely a war hero. He was also a Republican who served at a point in time when Republicans were interested in solving problems–not creating them–and had a fairly consistent view of things. Although I will never, for the life of me, understand how exactly a party that wants to be the party of small government seems to be so interested in what goes on in people’s beds and bodies.
I just remember him now being wheeled to the Senate to pass a really important piece of legislation that the party shot down because of some weird conspiracy theories. They walked right by a man in a wheel chair that has given a lot to this country and ignored his pleas to recognize his right to have access to life. He spoke out yesterday and the comments were doozies.
Asked on “Fox News Sunday” if the Senate was broken, Dole responded that “it is bent pretty badly.”
“It seems almost unreal that we can’t get together on a budget, or legislation,” said Dole, who served in the Senate from 1969 to 1996. “We weren’t perfect by a long shot, but at least we got our work done.”
Dole came back to the Senate last December to support a United Nations treaty to bar discrimination against people with disabilities, which failed after a vast majority of Republicans declined to support it.
Dole said in his Fox News interview that he isn’t sure there would be a place for him and other big-time Republicans of his generation, like Presidents Reagan and Nixon, in the current GOP.
“Reagan couldn’t have made it. Certainly, Nixon couldn’t have made it, because he had ideas. We might have made it, but I doubt it,” said Dole, who called himself a “mainstream conservative Republican.”
“I think they ought to put a sign on the national committee doors that says closed for repairs, until New Year’s Day next year, and spend that time going over ideas and positive agendas,” Dole said about the current state of his party.
I thought the comment about Nixon was particularly interesting. He was a man of ideas. Those ideas also included attracting the Southern Confederates into the party that now are the big problem. That sure is a bold idea. Attract a bunch of folks with a history of insurgencies. So, the sorry state of the nation has a lot to do with Nixon’s big ideas and Reagan’s big ideas and we basically have Obama throwing together Dolecare which was a big idea in its time too. I think we need fewer big ideas and more solutions.
The Census Bureau has reported that one out of six Americans lives in poverty. A shocking figure. But it’s actually much worse. Inequality is spreading like a shadowy disease through our country, infecting more and more households, and leaving a shrinking number of financially secure families to maintain the charade of prosperity.
1. Almost half of Americans had NO assets in 2009
Analysis of Economic Policy Institute data shows that Mitt Romney’s famous 47 percent, the alleged ‘takers,’ have taken nothing. Their debt exceeded their assets in 2009.
2. It’s Even Worse 3 Years Later
Since the recession, the disparities have continued to grow. An OECD report states that “inequality has increased by more over the past three years to the end of 2010 than in the previous twelve,” with the U.S. experiencing one of the widest gaps among OECD countries. The 30-year decline in wages has worsened since the recession, as low-wage jobs have replaced formerly secure middle-income positions.
3. Over half of Americans are now IN poverty.
According to IRS data, the average household in the bottom 50% brings in about $18,000 per year. That’s less than the poverty line for a family of three ($19,000) or a family of four ($23,000).
4. 75% of Americans are NEAR poverty.
The average household in the bottom 75% earns about $31,000 per year. To be eligible for food assistance, a family can earn up to 130% of the federal poverty line, or about $30,000 for a family of four.
Incredibly, Congress is trying to cut food assistance. Republican Congressman Stephen Fincher of Tennessee referred to food stamps as “stealing.” He added a Biblical quote: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” A recent jobs hearing in Washington was attended by one Congressman.
5. Putting it in Perspective
Inequality is at its ugliest for the hungriest people. While food support was being targeted for cuts, just 20 rich Americans made as much from their 2012 investments as the entire 2012 SNAP (food assistance) budget, which serves 47 million people.
Since 1900, the U.S. has pulled enough water from underground aquifers to fill two Lake Eries. And in just the first decade of the 21st century, we’ve extracted underground water sufficient to raise global sea level by more than 2 percent. We suck up 25 cubic kilometers of buried water per year.
Researchers from the University of Leicester have revealed in the journal Antiquity that the remains of King Richard III had been buried in an untidy grave, “without any pomp or solemn funeral,” as the medieval historian Polydore Vergil had written. There were no signs of a coffin or a shroud, and the lozenge-shaped grave was too short for his body, which had been placed on one side of the hole. Additional evidence suggests that the defeated king’s hands may have been tied. Other medieval graves in the town had been carefully dug to the correct length and with vertical sides.
The World Economic Forumranks Japan a dismal 101st in gender equality out 135 countries — behind Azerbaijan, Indonesia and China. Not a single Nikkei 225 company is run by a woman. Female participation in politics is negligible, and the male-female wage gap is double the average in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries.
One number explains why Japan must pull women into the job market and help them achieve leadership roles: 15 percent. That’s how much of a boost that gross domestic product would receive if female employment matched men’s (about 80 percent), says Kathy Matsui, the chief Japan equity strategist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
“Japan is lagging because it’s running a marathon with one leg,” says Matsui, who has been churning out “Womenomics” reports regularly since 1999. “It must start tapping its most underutilized resource.”
Abe is acting from fiscal necessity, not from a sense of social justice. Japan’s workforce is shrinking as the population ages and the birthrate declines. That might be manageable if not for a public debt more than twice the size of the $5.9 trillion economy. Politically, increasing the number of women workers is an easier sell than opening up Japan to immigrant labor.
The deal is that some of the Abenomics suggestions to correct some of these issues for women are strikingly patriarchal.
The government is considering circulating “Women’s Notebooks” to warn of the evils of postponing marriage and motherhood. Yes, career-oriented women are selfish. When Abe calls on companies to provide three years of maternity leave, he uses a Japanese expression that a child should be held by its mother until the age of 3. In other words, kids are women’s work. (In fact, knowing that a three-year absence could derail their careers, many women are likely to further delay childbirth.)
Abe’s government should begin by actually enforcing the 1986 Equal Employment Opportunity Law. Japan should promote diversity and offer tax incentives to companies that do, as well. More-flexible work hours would draw women into the workforce. So would offering subsidized or free day care so more families can afford it.
At least Japan is trying to have a discussion. All we get here are cuts to early child education and care and less access to reproductive health care and family planning.
A parole hearing in the Russian town of Berezniki has been adjourned until May 23 after a jailed member of the all-female opposition group Pussy Riot refused to continue taking part via video-link.
At the hearing on May 22, the court rejected Maria Alyokhina’s requests to be physically present and to have the judge and the prosecutor replaced.
Alyokhina, who spoke to the Berezniki court from her prison in the Perm region, announced that she was starting a hunger strike.
Her lawyer, Irina Khrunova, told journalists that there were many procedural violations in the parole hearing.
“Masha [Alyokhina] and I agreed [before the parole hearing] that if the court did not allow her to be brought to the courtroom, then she would refuse to participate in the hearings,” she said.
Khrunova indicated that Alyokhina would also not participate in the hearing on May 23.
“She very much wanted to appear in court; she wanted to tell the court about her situation and why she thought she deserved to be released on parole, but since the court refused to hear her personally, she thought she didn’t need to continue [participation],” he said.
Alyokhina and another Pussy Riot member, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, are serving two-year prison sentences after being convicted of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.”
Alyokhina, Tolokonnikova, and a third member, Yekaterina Samutsevich, were arrested in February 2012 after staging a performance critical of President Vladimir Putin in Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral.
Samutsevich also received a two-year prison sentence but was later released on probation.
Tolokonnikova’s parole request was denied last month by a court in the Russian republic of Mordovia, where she is serving her prison sentence.
Hard to get justice anywhere in the world these days.
No Justice No Peace.
What’s on you reading and blogging list this holiday?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
The initiative originated in Spain in 2006 as “Día del Orgullo Friki” and spread around the world via the internet.
With the internet, there really is no dearth of things to celebrate. I thought I’d highlight all the girl geeks that have been in the headlines recently for this morning’s roundup. Before we get to that though, I did a little digging for the origins and popularization of the term “geek girl”:
Via Geek Girl zine bio. Click image to visit.
geekgirl // (say ‘geekgerl) noun Colloquial a female computer geek, especially on the internet [coined by Rosie Cross, born 1958, British internet publisher in Australia, as the title of her online magazine] 1993.
Although, the most common connotation of geek girl tends to be in relation to computer-geeking and tech-journalists, I think the women of the Sky Dancing sisterhood fall under the geek girl umbrella with respect to their various areas of interest. Take our frontpage regulars for example:
Dr. Dakinikat, the financial economist wonk-slash-jazz pianist-slash-buddhist philosopher queen
Dr. Bostonboomer, the developmental psychologist, voice of the baby boomer generation, and old school journalism newshound
JJ aka Minkoff Minx, the medieval studies expert, modern-day equivalent of a medievalist scribe (hee!), and all around renaissance woman if I may say so!
We’ve just got all kinds of enthusiasts of all kinds of disciplines and subject matter here, which I think is perfectly reflective of the broader community of sisters out there, working together, sharing their voices and talents, building friendships and families. Like our girl Hillary says. “It Takes a Village!”
President Obama announced Monday his intent to bestow a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom to astronaut Dr. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, whose obituary revealed was survived by her female partner of 27 years.
“We remember Sally Ride not just as a national hero, but as a role model to generations of young women,” said President Obama in a statement. “Sally inspired us to reach for the stars, and she advocated for a greater focus on the science, technology, engineering and math that would help us get there. Sally showed us that there are no limits to what we can achieve, and I look forward to welcoming her family to the White House as we celebrate her life and legacy.”
Icing on the cake:
The release noted that the White House informed Ride’s partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy, and Ride’s mother and sister about the award last week. The award will be presented at a ceremony at the White House later this year.
I will totally cry if a photograph turns up later this year, of Sally’s partner, mother, and/or sister receiving the award on her behalf.
And, did you know:
In December, NASA intentionally crashed a pair of twin satellites into the surface of the moon, and named the crash site after Ride, in recognition of her numerous contributions to NASA’s Grail project and science in general.
RIP Sally Kristen Ride (1951-2012) Ad astra … To the stars, heroine.
Thank you, President Obama. Thank you, NASA. Thank you history–for finally being on the right side of it. And, thanks to Sally Ride and to all the members of the LGBT community, both the activists and the people just leading their lives and trailblazing like Sally. To take a page from Hillary again, this time from her concession speech during the ’08 primaries…what is truly remarkable when “firsts” of these sorts happen, is that in the long run they won’t be remarkable anymore. Girls can now dream of flying in space and winning presidential primaries at all…because they have seen women before them do these things.
I don’t know how many of you are familiar with Jonathan Kozol’s Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation, but it is a great book I recommend about the poorest of the poor living in the South Bronx and at one point one of the subjects Kozol inteviews says, “Boys who are doing well in school will tell me, ‘I would like to be a sanitation man.’ I have to guard my words and not say anything to indicate my sense of disappointment. In this neighborhood, a sanitation job is something to be longed for.”
That’s a book excerpt permanently etched into my brain. And, if the boys in the Bronx are dreaming of sanitation work, I can only imagine what girls there see on their horizon, if anything at all.
Hopefully the more trails blazed by more women of various backgrounds, from various walks of lives and various neighborhoods, the more girls (and boys!) can dream, without regard to their gender, class, race, sexual orientation, creed, or special needs.
AL AIN // The opening riff of the Deep Purple classic Smoke on the Water pounds out across a college hall.
It’s a common enough scene, as the song has been a standard entry on the playlists of countless heavy rock bands for decades.
However there is nothing ordinary about the five musicians pumping out those familiar chords. They are Random Stars: the first Emirati all-girl rock band.
“Playing rock ‘n’ roll is awesome,” says IT security student Bushra Hassan Al Hashimi, 22, who plays rhythm guitar. “We are the first girls from the UAE who play electric guitars as a band.
“It takes us away from the stress of homework and other college stuff – we play some music and we work on our songs. I’ve always liked rock ‘n’ roll.”
“You don’t make music for immortality, you make music for the moment of capturing the sheer joy of being alive on planet earth, ‘WOW! is this fun… this is just the greatest, everybody should live it that way.’”
…which is exactly what the Emirati girls are doing with their band “Random Stars.” I hope you click over and give the rest a read. It’s a great story.
Sinha’s guides were concerned about her slow pace until the team reached an 8,750-metre (28,707 foot) junction that climbers pass through on their way to the top of the mountain, Sherpa said.
“But once she got to that point, she gained energy and confidence and started moving really quickly,” Sherpa said.
25-year-old Sinha reached the 8,848 metre-high summit of the world’s highest peak at 10.55 am today, as a member of the Eco Everest Expedition from the Tata Group, an official of the Tourism Ministry of Nepal said.
Sinha, a resident of Ambedkar Nagar in Uttar Pradesh, was pushed out of the general compartment of Padmawati Express for resisting a chain-snatching attempt by some criminals, while travelling from Lucknow to Delhi on April 12, 2011.
She was hit by a passing train and was seriously injured. She was hospitalised with serious leg and pelvic injuries and in a bid to save her life, doctors had to amputate her left leg below the knee.
Sinha had this to say in an interview to an Indian TV station before her climb:
“At that time everyone was worried for me. I then realised I had to do something in my life so that people stop looking at me with pity. I read about people scaling the Mt Everest. I spoke to my older brother and my coach who only encouraged me,” she had told NDTV.
Only 25 years old and such presence of mind, not to mention of body and spirit–a gloriously athletic-yet-geeky combination if you ask me! And, that’s not where the story even ends :
NEW DELHI: Arunima Sinha, the country’s first amputee to conquer Mt Everest, will soon be a police officer.
Arunima last year qualified a written test and skill abilities exam of the central government and qualified for getting an appointment as a Head Constable in the central paramilitary force CISF.
Add gutsy to the list of words to describe this young woman! Cheers to Ms. Arunima Sinha!
It’s one thing to be out and proud. It’s a whole other ball game to actively let gay teens know that when they are hurting they can call you. Brittney Griner, who just won a GLAAD award, along with being the #1 pick in this year’s WNBA draft, is an amazing human being, as you will see at 2:50.
Here’s the youtube:
As a My So-Called Life geek/fangirl, I love that Wilson Cruz (“Rickie Vasquez” on MSCL) introduced Brittney Griner…and such a wonderfully delivered, and well-deserved, introduction it is!
And, Ms. Griner’s acceptance. Just WOW. Watch the entire clip if you can.
I don’t know if Griner’s story fits in the geek girl category or not, but this young woman is so well-spoken–and smashingly dressed in a gender-bender suit–that I wouldn’t be surprised if she had some geek in her. Plus she’s a college grad this month! Congratulations, shero!
Karen Clark Minnesota State Representative South Minneapolis, MN
Representative Karen Clark was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 1980, making her the longest serving openly gay or lesbian state legislator in the country. She represents three inner city neighborhoods in South Minneapolis, the lowest income district in the state. Representative Clark is an advocate for low income, Indigenous American Indian and community of color constituents, including many new Americans. A former public health nurse, current college instructor and co-founder of the Women’s Environmental Institute, some of Representative Clark’s major legislative accomplishments include chief authoring and passing worker and consumer right-to-know toxic exposure laws, affordable housing and homelessness initiatives, youth and dislocated worker job training strategies and numerous human rights, environmental justice and anti-discrimination protections. Recently, Representative Clark authored and helped pass the 2013 Minnesota Freedom to Marry bill with bi-partisan support.
Policy wonk on and keep on blazing trails, Karen Clark!
Two other young women were in my newsfeed this week for their ‘girl genius’ accomplishments. JJ already posted about one of these girls in one of her roundups, but I feel it’s only right to include her again. Via the feminist FB page, “Unpacking the ‘F’ Word”:
INSPIRATIONAL WOMAN: Eesha Khare
(Photo: Intel)
Waiting hours for a cellphone to charge may become a thing of the past, thanks to an 18-year-old high-school student’s invention. She won a $50,000 prize Friday at an international science fair for creating an energy storage device that can be fully juiced in 20 to 30 seconds.
I am grading essays and papers on currency crises (circa 1999-2002) and financial crises (the last one) and basically all those kinds of crises the tend to come from out of control speculation and the government encouraging the wrong kinds of things. This mostly happens because rich people donate to the campaigns of politicians and own newspapers and media outlets. Politicians want to get reelected and get more powerful and more rich. Rich businesses and investors want to get more powerful and rich. It’s kind of the perfect alignment of shared interests based on lust and greed and all the baser instincts. Isn’t it terrible when the facts get in the way? So, they just ignore them or consider them an alternative liberal opinion. It drives me nuts.
Ten years ago this month, Congress enacted the third major tax cut of the George W. Bush administration. Its centerpiece was a huge cut in the tax rate on dividends. Historically, they had been taxed as ordinary income, but the Bush plan, enacted by a Republican Congress, cut that rate to 15 percent. The tax rate on ordinary income went as high as 35 percent.
This initiative originated with the economist R. Glenn Hubbard, who had been chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers when the proposal was sent to Congress. Mr. Hubbard was a strong believer that the double taxation of corporate profits – first at the corporate level and again when paid out as dividends – was a major economic problem.
During the George H.W. Bush administration, Mr. Hubbard had been deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for tax policy and wrote a Treasury report advocating full integration of the corporate and individual income taxes.
Mr. Hubbard had also spearheaded enactment of big tax cuts in 2001 and 2002 that he said would jump-start the American economy. In an op-ed article in The Washington Post on Nov. 16, 2001, he predicted that the soon-to-be-enacted 2002 tax cut, which President Bush signed on March 9, 2002, would “quickly deliver a boost to move the economy back toward its long-run growth path.”
Mr. Hubbard predicted that it would create 300,000 additional jobs in 2002 and add half a percentage point to the real gross domestic product growth rate.
There is no evidence that the tax cut had any such effect. The unemployment rate remained above 5.7 percent all year, rising to 5.9 percent in November and 6 percent in December. The real G.D.P. growth rate fell each quarter of 2002, and by the fourth quarter growth was at a standstill. Hence the need for yet another big tax cut.
The idea of the 2003 legislation was to raise dividend payouts, thereby bolstering personal income, and raise the prices of common stock, which would improve household balance sheets. As President Bush explained in his signing statement, “This will encourage more companies to pay dividends, which in itself will not only be good for investors but will be a corporate reform measure.” He also said the dividend tax cut would “increase the wealth effect around America and help our markets.”
The Treasury Department issued a fact sheet on July 30 asserting that the decline in dividends had been a cause of the weak stock market and noting that dividend payouts had risen since enactment of the tax cut on May 28.
Subsequent research, however, found that the increase in dividends was a short-term phenomenon and mainly at companies where stock options were a major form of executive compensation. A 2005 Federal Reserve Board study found that the United States stock market did not outperform European stock markets after the dividend cut. Nor did stocks qualifying for lower dividend taxes outperform those, such as real estate investment trusts, that did not qualify for lower dividend taxes. Non-dividend paying stocks slightly outperformed dividend-paying stocks, and many corporations that did pay higher dividends scaled back stock repurchases by a similar amount.
So, this is yet another example where Republican economic policy is totally out of step with outcomes, data, and reality. Yet, they keep repeating that it works the way it doesn’t work just because, remember, the agenda is greed, power, and more wealth to the already greedy, powerful and wealthy. The deal is they get it wrong, got it wrong, and continue to get it wrong but that doesn’t stop them from trying to weasel their way into a narrative that says, hey, this really isn’t wrong. There’s still some validity there and all economists must be liberals like Paul Krugman who are just talking up their philosophical line. Take austerity economics, please. I mean it. Take it and those idiots who push it to hell and leave them there. Still, the very serious people want to take this very seriously even when it is just plain seriously wrong. Take Michael Kinsley, please. He can report from Hell.
There are two possible explanations. First, it might be that I am not just wrong (in saying that the national debt remains a serious problem and we’d be well advised to worry about it) but just so spectacularly and obviously wrong that there is no point in further discussion. Or second, to bring up the national debt at all in such discussions has become politically incorrect. To disagree is not just wrong but offensive. Such views do exist. Racism for example. I just didn’t realize that the national debt was one of them.
Kinsley assumes that it must be the second explanation, and then goes on from there.
I can’t speak for anyone else who pushed back against Kinsley’s column from last week. Speaking for myself, however, I blogged about it because Kinsley was “spectacularly and obviously wrong.” I say this because almost everything I wrote in my response to Kinsley I knew at age 18 after taking Economics 101 in college.
Austerians believe, sincerely, that their path is the quicker one to prosperity in the longer run. This doesn’t mean that they have forgotten the lessons of Keynes and the Great Depression. It means that they remember the lessons of Paul Volcker and the Great Stagflation of the late 1970s. “Stimulus” is strong medicine—an addictive drug—and you don’t give the patient more than you absolutely have to.
This is wrong for three reasons, one pedantic and two substantive. First, to be pedantic, the austerity debate is about the wisdom of using expansionary fiscal policy — i.e., running a significant federal budget deficit — to alleviate downturns. Paul Volcker was the chairman of the Federal Reserve and thereby responsible for setting monetary policy. He had nothing to do with fiscal policy. This is a distinction that I learned in my first few lectures on macroeconomics. So either Kinsley phrased this badly or he’s confused about what this debate is about.
It just keeps coming down to the fact that most journalists and politicians simply do not know what they are talking about when it comes to economics. So, they assume an economist like Paul Krugman has a liberal bias on all things–including the color of the sky and the laws of gravity and demand–and they make the worse assumption that those arguing Republican policy these days must have a valid point when the only point is, yes, you know it … to deliver more wealth, power and influence to themselves and their friends that already have it. Some times a lie really is just a lie.
A wonderful example of the myopia of the deficit scolds…
The background is that Michael Kinsley wrote a particularly bad column last week about “austerity,” a key point of which was based on factually incorrect memories of what went wrong in the 1970s; as you can imagine, this earned him plenty of corrections and dismissals from people who used access to accurate economic and government policy statistics.
Kinsley was quite taken aback by this, apparently, and wrote a follow up to defend himself. Dan Drezner has already pointed out that Kinsley is still relying on the same inaccurate memories that got his first column into trouble, but I actually found a different part of Kinsley II more interesting, in which he thinks he’s caught Paul Krugman in a contradiction.
Kinsley writes: Paul Krugman takes credit for good economic news whenever it happens. On Krugman’s blog site (“The Conscience of a Liberal”) last week were two bits of prose side-by-side. One was an ad for his latest book, End This Depression Now! “How bad have things gotten?” the ad asks rhetorically.” How did we get stuck in what now can only be called a depression?” Right next door is Krugman’s gloat about the recent pretty-good economic news. “So where are the celebrations,” he asks, “now that the debt issue looks, if not solved, at least greatly mitigated?” Greatly mitigated? By what? Certainly not by anyone taking Paul Krugman’s advice. He has been, in his own self-estimate, a lone, ignored voice for reason crying out in an unreasoning universe.
What’s the problem? The linked post by Krugman isn’t a gloat about good economic news! It is, to be sure a gloat; it’s a gloat about deficits…Krugman goes so far as to call lower deficits “progress,” although as I read it he’s really just saying that lower deficits should be counted as progress from the point of view of the deficit scolds.
What’s happening here is that Kinsley is projecting onto Krugman a classic deficit scold mistake; Kinsley is conflating the federal budget deficit with the economy. Krugman isn’t doing that; it’s purely Kinsley’s invention.
It gets, however, to exactly why Kinsley was buried under a large pile of abuse after his first column. Well, in part; the other part, as Krugman notes elsewhere, is “the existence now of a policy blogosphere…which makes bluffing harder.” Say something factually inaccurate these days, and you’re going to get slammed; it seems that some pundits who preceded that development find it hard to get used to it.
I still have no idea why journalists feel they just know everything about economics compared to say, knowing everything about Brownian motion or performing brain surgery. It’s the same with politicians. They just seem to confuse a really complex subject that most people really struggle with in college and never take beyond that with something like a political science class or a journalism class. You don’t even get real economic stuff until you way up there in school. The introductory stuff is like the ABCs and they don’t even seem to grasp that. Anyway, stop confusing getting facts wrong with just another opinion …
Hello, newsjunkies! The headlines are driving me mad. How about a little festive late night detour of the pantheistic sort, with a dollop of environmental consciousness-raising on the side?
The 12th World Turtle Day is an annual event sponsored by American Tortoise Rescue (ATR). The day is organized to bring attention to turtles and tortoises around the world that are facing numerous challenges to their survival.
Founders Susan Tellem and Marshall Thompson are the force behind World Turtle Day. “World Turtle Day was started 12 years ago to increase respect and knowledge for the world’s oldest creatures. These gentle animals have been around for about 200 million years, yet they are rapidly disappearing as a result of the exotic food industry, habitat destruction and the cruel pet trade,” says Tellem. “We are seeing smaller turtles coming into the rescue meaning that older adults are disappearing from the wild, and the breeding stock is drastically reduced. It is a very sad time for turtles and tortoises of the world.” Tellem added that many sea turtles lost their lives in 2010 thanks to BP’s uncontrolled oil spill off the coast of Louisiana. “It’s a tragic example of putting profits before preserving our environment.
Oh, y’all know nothing lights a fire under me like that nasty old phrase “putting profits before…”
It’s not rocket science knowing how best to start protecting turtles – you would protect their nesting beaches and the seas around them – yet growing pressure from human development means turtles are losing out across the world.
Some places where turtles were traditionally hunted for meat and their shells are switching toecotourism instead. Turtles, like whales, must be worth more alive than dead, right?
Turtles are fantastic ocean ambassadors, but also indicators of the many ways we humans are screwing those same oceans up. Protecting turtles means changing fishing methods, protecting areas are needed for feeding and breeding, and for us to stop treating the ocean as a rubbish tip.
Emphasis above in bold is mine. I just really dig that sentence! The turtle is a great motif for studying the constructive and destructive forces, the yin and the yang, in our modern human story.
I don’t have my reference books on symbolism with me right now, so I will just have to rely on this quick bit of convenience from wikipedia:
Turtles are frequently depicted in popular culture as easygoing, patient, and wise creatures. Due to their long lifespan, slow movement, sturdiness, and wrinkled appearance, they are an emblem of longevity and stability in many cultures around the world.[1][2] Turtles are regularly incorporated into human culture, with painters, photographers, poets, songwriters, and sculptors using them as subjects.[3] They have an important role in mythologies around the world,[4] and are often implicated in creation myths regarding the origin of the Earth.[5]Sea turtles are a charismatic megafauna and are used as symbols of the marine environment and environmentalism.[3]
Environmental activists and proponents of ecotourism seek to use the leverage provided by charismatic and well known species to achieve more subtle and far-reaching goals in species and biodiversity conservation.[citation needed] By directing public attention to the diminishing numbers of giant panda due to habitat loss, for example, conservation groups can raise support for the protection of the panda and for the entire ecosystem of which it is a part.[citation needed] (The giant panda is portrayed in the logo of the World Wide Fund for Nature.)
Hooray for the panda, hooray for the turtle, hooray for their ecosystems, hooray for the Earth. Win-win-win-win!
Furthermore, the IUCN warns, the impact of losing them goes far beyond fewer pet options.
“Turtles and tortoises are major biodiversity components of the ecosystems they inhabit, often serving as keystone species from which other animals and plants benefit,” the report explains.
And while the reasons for their disappearance abound, according to the IUCN, all of them go back to the same source: humans.
There’s that dirty old bastard again: Profit before… people… before nature… before nurture.
Because of this, in order to make sure that the animals that have been around since the dinosaurs don’t go the way of the way of their former peers, the report states an intervention is needed.
Among the most significant movements of late focused on minimizing human interference in the life of turtles is that of different towns, including Pensacola, Fla., to keep artificial light exposure over the ocean at a minimum.
The reason this is so important, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has to do with when the turtles hatch, which occurs at night. Because the small creatures orient themselves toward light, which traditionally came from the stars and moons, instead of making their way into the ocean, many of the newborn turtles are found scooting their way toward boardwalks or endlessly down the shore.
Oh dear goddess. The very well lit Kemah Boardwalk down here near Houston versus… Teeny Tiny Baby Turtle!
Just another reason I have a love-hate relationship with all these corporate-built “boardwalks” popping up more and more these days. They’re fun, but… at what cost.
It’s not all bleak and disaster capitalist, though! According to this press release from the World Conservation Society, via newswise, Slow and Steady, Turtles Gain Ground:
Last year, WCS unveiled a strategy to save the 25 most endangered turtles through conservation work at its Zoos and Aquarium, Zoological Health Program, and Global Conservation Programs.
At the Bronx Zoo and Prospect Park Zoo, more than a dozen turtle and tortoise species from around the world are being raised in “assurance colonies” to ensure they do not go extinct.
Highlights include:
• Five Chinese yellow-headed box turtles were recently hatched at the Bronx Zoo. Classified as critically endangered, fewer than 150 remain in the wild.
• The Bronx Zoo currently maintains an assurance colony of seven Roti Island snake-necked turtles, a species that was discovered in 1994 and subsequently hunted to near-extinction. Only a few scattered individuals remain in the wild.
• The Bronx Zoo currently maintains a population of eight Sulawesi forest turtles, a species only found on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. It was described as a new turtle species in 1995. In the late 90’s, two to three thousand turtles per year were collected by traffickers, with the result that by 1999, the population had collapsed. Fewer than 100 of the animals removed from the wild remain alive today.
Progress over profits! Or, at least not behind them.
Chelmsford — Increasing respect and knowledge for the world’s oldest creatures, World Turtle Day is coming to Chelmsford, thanks to one 11-year-old’s determination to bring awareness to the gentle animals facing extinction.
Parker Middle School fifth-grader Katarina Monnes will host a turtle awareness and children’s activities program at the Chelmsford Library on Thursday, May 23, from 3:30 to 5 p.m., as a part of her Girl Scouts Bronze Award project.
“They are interesting creatures. They have been around since before dinosaurs and have many unique characteristics. Did you know turtles never age? Some scientists are studying that. They can live to be over 100 years old, and only die from injury or disease, not old age,” said Monnes, who has raised funds for several national turtle foundations.
A little ecofeminist shero in the making, grin. Does my heart good!
The turtle hurtle
Monnes is now making it her mission to save local turtles, of which at least three of the six species are listed as threatened or endangered. In Chelmsford, there are box turtles, painted turtles, snapping turtles, bog turtles, red-eared slider turtles and wood turtles. The wood, box and bog turtles are endangered species.
“I hope people learn how to help, what we’re doing wrong to hurt the turtles, how we can stop that and more ways we can bring up the number of turtles,” said Monnes, who participated in a Junior Vet program at the Loggerhead Marine Rescue Center in Juno Beach, Fla. last year.
It’s as simple as that.
And wait, one more pic… one of my girls from the beginning of this year, doing their “terrapin terrific” best. Well, this is mostly just Lily bogarting and hamming it up for the camera, but you can see Rue’s little calico tush in the corner:
Alright. This is an Overnight Open Thread! Take care all and talk to you on the other side of tomorrow.
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
I thought I should put up another update, because there has been a lot more walking back of the reports that came out yesterday, not only about whether Ibragim Todashev was holding a knife when he supposedly “lunged” at an FBI agent, but also whether Todashev had even been questioned about involvement in the 2011 triple murder in Waltham MA with which Massachusetts officials have been trying to connect Tamerlan and Dzhokhor Tsarnaev.
This morning The Wall Street Journal reported that Reni Manukyan who is married to Ibragim Todashev–the man who was shot while being interrogated by several law enforcement officers in Orlando, Fl early yesterday–claim neither she nor her husband were ever asked about the murders.
Reni Manukyan, a 24-year-old assistant hotel-housekeeping manager who married Ibragim Todashev at a mosque near Boston in July 2010, says agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrived at her house in Atlanta and her mom’s house in Savannah, Ga., on Tuesday night, the same time they started questioning her late husband at his home in Orlando.
Ms. Manukyan says the FBI agents who came to her house asked about alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, whom she says her husband met after moving to the Boston area from Russia in 2008.
But she says the agents never asked about a Sept. 11, 2011, murder in Waltham, Mass., in which three victims—25-year-old Brendan Mess, 31-year-old Erik Weissman and 37-year-old Raphael Teken—were found dead with their throats slit and bodies covered in marijuana and cash….
“They never, ever—in all the interviews that I had and all the interviews that he had—never did they mention anything about a murder,” Ms. Manukyan said in a telephone interview. “Everything was about the bombing and about him knowing Tamerlan. They would show me a picture of Tamerlan or Tamerlan’s wife or some other guys that I haven’t a clue who they are, but nothing about a murder—nothing ever.”
She says that agent question her several times as they did her husband, and that he couldn’t have been involved in the murders since he doesn’t drink or use drugs of any kind. She doesn’t even think he was in Boston in September of 2011.
Khusen Taramov
The Boston Globe also has a story that walks back a number of yesterday’s reported leaks from investigators. According to the Globe, Todashev’s close friend and former roommate Khusen Taramov also claims Todarov was never questioned about the Waltham murders. He
said the two had been interviewed many times by FBI agents, and had been followed for weeks by an unmarked law enforcement vehicle since the Marathon bombings.
Taramov, a fellow Chechen and immigrant from Russia, said his slain friend had been called almost daily by agents since the bombings, but Todashev had been assured that the Tuesday night interview would be the final one.
“They told us they needed just one more interview,” he said. “They said the case was closed after this.”
Fearful it would make them look suspicious, neither he nor Todashev had a lawyer present during the FBI questioning, Taramov said.
Taramov, who said he had spent nearly every moment with Todashev since the bombing, insisted that his friend had never been asked about the triple slaying in Waltham.
“We told each other everything, everything,” Taramov said. “He never said anything about any murder and they never asked him anything about that. Just about the bombings and [Tamerlan] Tsarnaev.”
Manukyan and Taramov both say that Todashev did not have radical beliefs. He was just a normal Muslim. So what the heck is going on here?
A confession would have solved the triple homicide, and it would have cemented Tsarnaev’s role in that crime. Since reading Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his miranda rights, investigators haven’t been able to extract information about the Tsarnaevs as freely as they’d like — or at least it hasn’t spilled out in public as much as the people of Boston would like to hear. A confession might have been a big piece in the puzzle of the Tsarnaev brothers. Instead, we’re left with a Jack Bauer-style tale of secret confessions turned deadly, with more questions than answers.
What’s perhaps more puzzling is that the story doesn’t seem to add up: What new piece of information makes a guy who has been cooperating with FBI agents for the last month or so turn on them? Could the seizure of the computer have led to more revelations? Could the threat of jail time have dawned on him? And even more macabre, one of Todashev’s friends told NBC Orlando that he had been questioned with Todashev by agents on Tuesday night — and that Todashev felt like he was going to die. “He felt inside he was going to get shot,” Khusen Taramiv said. “I told him, ‘Everything is going to be fine, don’t worry about it.’ He said, ‘I have a really bad feeling.'”
Jerelyn at Talk Left also breaks down the various reports and speculates about what might have happened. She also calls attention to another bit of information–that Todashev had a girlfriend named Tatiana Gruzdeva (this may be her Facebook page), and she was arrested by ICE on May 16 and is currently in custody for immigration violations.
Anyone with a shred of empathy could certainly understand why someone who has been shadowed by the FBI for the past month, interrogated repeatedly for hours, and then accused of murder–plus his girlfriend has been turned over to immigration authorities (a common FBI tactic to get information)–might get angry and perhaps make a sudden move. But did he really have to die when there were at least four law enforcement officers in the room with him at the time?
Jerelyn:
FBI interviews aren’t usually recorded. I doubt we’ll ever know what transpired during the interview. We’ll only get self-serving statements by law enforcement that justify their actions.
That some of these law enforcement officials use the words “implicated himself” as opposed to “confessed” in relation to the killings doesn’t mean Todashev acknowledged a role in the killings. If he was in Boston, it could mean something as little as Tamerlan called him that night and asked him to pick him up and give him a ride, or that Tamerlan later gave him some items that would link Tamerlan to the killings. Since Tamerlan is dead, he can’t defend himself against the murder charges law enforcement seems determined to attach to him. (Neither can Todashev.) Even if they find Tamerlan’s DNA at the home of the murdered men, it doesn’t mean he was involved in the murder. Since Tamerlan and one of the victims were good friends, if the DNA is just found somewhere in the home or on clothes or a drinking cup, it could have been deposited prior to the day of the killings.
I am not buying the unconfirmed report that he suddenly went beserk when asked to sign a written confession. Or that he confessed to the murders. He may have said something that the agents believed to be incriminating, but that doesn’t mean Todashev intended it that way or agreed with their interpretation.
I don’t doubt that he “got volatile” at the end — FBI agents don’t execute people for no reason. (Whether the shooting was an overreaction is another question.) But as to what set him off, it could be that after whatever he said that the agent thought was incriminating, the agent told him he was being arrested for the murders, and he reacted angrily because he believed he was being unjustly accused.
There’s more. You can read it at the link.
At this point, all we know for sure is that a witness with valuable information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev is dead. We don’t know who killed him or even whether more than one of the officers present shot him. A team of FBI agents will determine if the shooting was justified, but most likely they’ll find a way to absolve their fellow officers.
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
Good Morning Every One!
We’re abusing all of our resources. Here’s research that shows how quickly we’re draining our aquifers. They are a key source of fresh water.
AL AIN // The opening riff of the Deep Purple classic Smoke on the Water pounds out across a college hall.
Arunima Sinha, Indian Woman, Is First Female Amputee To Climb Everest:.
And, on that uplifting note and image, I’m going to turn the floor over to you in the comments!
Good Morning!
economics. So, they assume an economist like Paul Krugman has a liberal bias on all things–including the color of the sky and the laws of gravity and demand–and they make the worse assumption that those arguing Republican policy these days must have a valid point when the only point is, yes, you know it … to deliver more wealth, power and influence to themselves and their friends that already have it. Some times a lie really is just a lie.
Welcome to World Turtle Day(/Night!):
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments