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The Official Paracast Political Thread! — Part Four

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This is what happens when you don't have an EPA. :mad:

City of burning lakes: experts fear Bangalore will be uninhabitable by 2025
The illegal dumping of waste mixed with mass untreated sewage in India’s Silicon Valley is creating a water crisis which threatens residents’ health – and is causing the city’s famous lakes to catch fire
LINK: City of burning lakes: experts fear Bangalore will be uninhabitable by 2025
TEXT Excerpted: On the evening of Thursday 16 February, residents in the south-east part of Bangalore noticed huge plumes of smoke rising into the sky. The smoke was coming from the middle of Bellandur Lake – the biggest lake in the city at a little over 890 acres. They realised the seemingly impossible had happened: the lake had caught fire. Even fire fighters wondered how a blaze in water could be put out.

The fire in the lake burned for 12 hours and left behind a sinister black patch in the centre, according to some eye-witness accounts.

This is the new story of Bangalore – state capital, India’s Silicon Valley, and once upon a time, the “city of lakes”. The reasons why these lakes are able to catch fire begin to explain why scientists at the influential Indian Institute of Science believe Bangalore will be “unliveable” in a few years’ time.

A lethal mix of factors create an environment that merely requires the slightest of triggers for lakes to go up in flames. Untreated effluents pour into the waters from the many industries and homes on its banks, illegal waste disposal takes place on a large scale – often including rubbish which is set on fire – and invasive weeds cover large swathes of the lake in a thick green canopy.

The latest incident is not the first time the lake has caught fire; it happened in May 2015. A few days later, it was in the news again for being covered in snow-like froth, which began to swirl up in the summer wind, engulfing passers-by. The froth was the result of chemical waste dumped in the lake, and was toxic enough to crack windshields, wear the paint off car hoods and exacerbate the severe respiratory issues that have plagued citizens in recent years.
 
Listen carefully - a lesson to be learned from history. [BTW In case some are unaware, the 'naming rights' are shifting to China and other locales. The situation with Higher education in the US is key. Trump - and those who think about science as that cabal does - is gutting our science edge as a nation. There will be consequences over time - 25 years is the usual lead-in time - look to 2035, a witching hour year if ever there was one.]

The Intellectual Collapse of Islam
TEXT: "Published on Apr 14, 2012: Neil deGrasse Tyson lectures a crowd on how religious fundamentalism is the root of the collapse of the Islamic Golden age of Science and Mathematics in Baghdad. An Islamic scholar named Hamid Al-Ghazali deemed Mathematics evil."
 
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Last bit from me on my soap box. I am essentially an optimist and I think the future is going to be an exciting place, but we have a lot of work to get there.

And for good measure, listen to what Richard Wolff says about Higher Education in the US. He also explains the differences among Keynesian economics, Marxist economics, and Neoclassical economics.

Economic Update With Richard Wolff: Education and an Economic Revolution
TEXT: Published on Feb 28, 2017: On today's Economic update, Professor Richard Wolff announces to his viewers that Kevin Birmingham, an English instructor from Harvard University was the 2016 recipient of the Truman Capote Award for his book "The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses.'" Professors goes on to say that Kevin Birmingham used his platform during the award ceremony to give a speech titled "The Great Shame of our Profession" in order to address the insecurity, challenges, and instability that most college professors have to face nowadays. Professor Wolff states that tenure faculty makes up 17% of college instructors and only 1 out 6 has job security. According to professor Birmingham, from 1975 to 2011, the number of part-time adjunct professors has increased systematically and now makes up the majority of college professors.

89% of college adjuncts work at more than one institution, 13% work at 4 or more institutions and the median pay of an adjunct in the United States is $2,700 per semester course according to 2014 congressional report. Only 1 out of 6 is a tenure instructor and 61% of college adjuncts are female. Richard Wolff indicates that college institutions prefer to hire overworked and underpaid adjuncts because it's more expensive to hire tenure professors. Public colleges hire more adjuncts because they lack funds and new legislation is making it harder to hire tenure professors. According to Professor Wolff, this unjust and regressive system hinders the teaching and learning experiences within institutions of higher education

Professor Wolff also cites reports from the University of California at Berkley as well as the University of Paris and compares the United States to four other countries in terms of distribution wealth. These reports shows that the richest 1% in Finland owns 12 % of country's wealth, in Canada the richest 1% owns 15.5% of the wealth, in France the top 1% owns 18% of the wealth, in Germany the top 1% owns 24.5% and the top 1% in the United States owns 41.8% of the national wealth. Even though each of these countries has a capitalist economy, the data points out that United States is by far the most unequal society when it comes to wealth distribution of any of the first world countries. Professor Wolff emphasizes that the countries have strong trade unions and various progressive parties, meanwhile in the United States, trade unions have been weakened. Lastly, Professor Wolff discusses and explains the differences among Keynesian economics, Marxist economics, and Neoclassical economics
 
The Republicans are going to have blood on their hands if their health care law is passed and goes into effect:

24 Million People Stand To Lose Insurance Under GOP Obamacare 'Replacement' | The Huffington Post

With millions and millions of people uninsured, they will not receive necessary medical care, and thousands will die as a result. More people than died during 9/11 and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined will lose their lives. This is not political talk. It is the natural consequence of making it impossible for people to keep their insurance coverage.
 
Interesting how nobody is able to refute all the stuff that's been coming out about Trump.

Long and short, the repeal/replace Obamacare scheme was actually a trick to give rich people a tax cut and fund it with money from the middle class and poor people. House Speaker Ryan essentially admits that in the response to the CBO report.

Trump pulled a bait and a switch on the people who voted for him. When Sen. Rubio called him a con man, he was on the money. And remember how Rubio messed up the Affordable Care Act by sneaking in a provision to repeal the risk corridors provision in a budget bill. Had that not been none, the current problems wouldn't exist.
 
Just thinking about millions of seniors staring out of their kitchen windows wondering how they will be able to afford their doctor’s visits & lifesaving medications doesn’t sound like “making America great again”. Sounds more like continuing bluster from a miserable jackass.

The irony here is that starry-eyed Trumpsters who voted the fool into power will be the most vulnerable when the axe comes swinging down. This is just one of the many reasons those who suggest Trump was the superior choice to Clinton are woefully mistaken, that is, unless existing in the top income brackets.
 
Just thinking about millions of seniors staring out of their kitchen windows wondering how they will be able to afford their doctor’s visits & lifesaving medications doesn’t sound like “making America great again”. Sounds more like continuing bluster from a miserable jackass.

The irony here is that starry-eyed Trumpsters who voted the fool into power will be the most vulnerable when the axe comes swinging down. This is just one of the many reasons those who suggest Trump was the superior choice to Clinton are woefully mistaken, that is, unless existing in the top income brackets.

I guess they shouldn't have voted for him, then.

Seriously - some of the voting regions that will be hardest hit by TrumpCare are the ones that were the biggest Trump supporters.

How stupid is that?
 
Hopefully, it’s a matter of sheer ignorance, however, gauging by the number of ongoing Trump supporters here & elsewhere, stupidity probably has its place.
 
By nephew Jaret is a learning-disabled person. He is covered by AHCCCS, which is Arizona's version of Medicaid. The plan being debated new — Trumpcare — will include sharp cutbacks in Medicaid. It will hit Jaret directly. He may lose all or most of his medical coverage. Many disabled people will be forced into nursing homes, which cannot be eliminated from such coverage.

So all this will be done to give rich people more money.
 
How about all of those unemployed coal miners in W. Virginia voting for change while champing @ the bit to get back to work? What will they think when learning that family members may be moving in with them because of “Trump-no-care”?

I suppose altogether, they could squat in a tent of sorts …

Then again, if entangled in a major conflict abroad, the poorest of the population will be targeted first for recruitment/enlistment while defending the filthy rich in the name of democracy.
 
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I didn't vote for trump but I am starting to like him. He has the global warming bozos on the run and big pharma shaking.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I am close to exiting these forums - for a variety of reasons - but maybe someone will benefit from Chris Hedges and his insights - for those in other parts of the world (at least, anyway) trying to understand what is taking place in the US. Hedges is gold.

If you have the stamina to watch this approx 30 min video: "Be prepared: the world we all thought we knew is about to get a whole lot uglier than we can imagine. This is where the 'beast' in man gets let out of the bottle."

"This is honestly getting fairly scary. When he mentioned Blackwater...one realizes that there's levels of this that one hadn't even considered. When you look at the world as it is now, with a thoroughly objective perspective, it's becoming more and more clear that something very dangerous and very consequential is happening...but hasn't even come close to climaxing yet. That's still to come. But the warning signs are everywhere. There's so much smoke at this point that it's become intellectually untenable to pretend there's no fire and that everything is ok."

Chris Hedges & Abby Martin Trump, Fascism & the Christian Right
TEXT: "Published on Feb 27, 2017: Chris Hedges & Abby Martin - Trump, Fascism & the Christian Right."
 
This Ship is Sinking Says Former Bush Official
TEXT: "Published on Mar 12, 2017: 'This Ship is Sinking' Says Former Bush Official"
 
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