EFTA00832441.pdf

From: Gregory Brown •c > To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bcc: [email protected] Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.. 3/06/2016 Date: Sun, 06 Mar 2016 09:47:38 +0000 Attachments: Pat_Metheny_bio.docx Inline-Images: image.png; image(1).png; image(2).png; image(3).png; image(4).png; image(5).png; image(6).png; image(7).png; image(8).png; image(9).png; image(10).png; image(' I).png; image(I2).png; image( I 3).png; image( I4).png; image(15).png; image( I 6).png; image( I 7).png; image( I 8).png; image(19).png DEAR FRIEND The Party of Personal Responsibility Needs to Take Responsibility For Trump Inline image 3 Congratulations Republican Party, you got what you wanted. You finally nominated your dream candidate: a fascist corporate psychopath who says what every hate-mongering white supremacist wants to hear. After four decades of a campaign strategy that exploited the fears of white nationalists, you finally nominated your dream candidate: a fascist corporate psychopath who says what every hate-mongering white supremacist wants to hear, rife with so little moral conviction that he won't even disavow the Ku Klux Klan until pressured by the media. Donald Trump is on track to be the Republican candidate for president in 2016. Is anyone surprised? Since Reagan first cemented the image of the "welfare queen" -- the stereotypical poor black American fraudulently collecting entitlements -- into the minds of middle America, the Republican Party has used rhetorical misdirection to blame blacks, Hispanic immigrants, women, homosexuals, and Muslims for every one of their policy failures. From such amorphous terms as "the 47 percent" to the straightforward attacks on "sluts" seeking birth control, Republican candidates have gone out of their way to implicitly assure white, straight, Christian, male Americans of their infallibility. It's only appropriate that after America elects a black president, those most frightened by their country's "changing complexion" would respond by lashing out against the politically correct language that Republicans have used to conceal their true feelings. "Straight talker" is a Republican euphemism for "racist like me," and EFTA00832441 conservative voters are ready for a candidate who embraces the language that they only dared whisper under their breath or behind closed doors. Finally, someone else to point at and say, "well, he said itfirst. And I appreciate his honesty." "Trump as an individual is not the problem here. Trump is the symptom." Fittingly, Donald Trump's qualification as a political outsider is most evident in his inability to be subtle (read: politically correct) about his bigotry. Republicans have fostered a growing sense of Islamophobia since the September iith attacks, but Trump was the first candidate to call for a ban on all Muslims entering the United States after the ISIS attack on Paris. Former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, who just gave her endorsement of Trump this week, once falsely claimed Mexican immigrants were taking Americans into the desert to behead them. But Trump was the first candidate to call a majority of them "rapists, criminals, and drug dealers" (a statement supported by no evidence whatsoever). Between cheering on supporters who physically assaulted a Black Lives Matter protester, endorsing the 'passion' shown by supposed supporters when they beat up a homeless Hispanic man, or making comments that feed into negative stereotypes of Jews, Chinese-Americans, and the disabled, Donald Trump has turned your racist grandmother's senile ramblings into a legitimate political campaign. But Trump as an individual is not the problem here. Trump is the symptom. Trump is the result of decades of rhetoric by a broken and misguided political party that set down the path of making white people afraid of outsiders and then forgot to rein in the momentum once it achieved short-term political success. The Republican Party has taught us that when you exploit fear for political gain, you plant a dangerous seed in the minds of the most heavily armed and hardly educated Americans. The evidence is dear: violent backlash against calls for racial equality, a rise in right-wing extremist attacks, a major political party's about-face on immigration policy, the disenfranchisement of millions of black Americans, and the radicalization of Muslims in America and overseas who face public policy and rhetoric targeting them for their beliefs. Racism is real, and our benevolent attempts to relegate it to an uncomfortable topic at Thanksgiving dinner have been overcome by a political machine that recognizes that emotion -- dare I say it? -- trumps rationality. The party of personal responsibility is now faced with its most daunting task: take responsibility for the monster it created and save America from a man so regressive that he threatens to return us to an age of internment camps and public lynchings. "Defeating Trump is not enough. We must defeat his ideas and the political machine that fosters them." It's also time that we as Americans take responsibility for allowing this to persist as long as it has. We can't just roll our eyes when someone turns a racial group into a monolithic entity, replete with all the negative characteristics they learned from the evening news. Black and Hispanic Americans are not lazy criminals, EFTA00832442 Islam is not a violent belief system, empowered women are not sluts, and Donald Trump is not a legitimate politician. The "silent majority" of male white supremacists likens themselves to a repressed group facing persecution just because "kill us some negros!" isn't an applause line at stump speeches anymore. We need to make it clear that they should REMAIN silent -- the real majority of Americans support racial, sexual, and religious equality, and we will speak louder for social justice than they can for segregation and bigotry. We have an obligation to protect this country from itself. I know many of my friends understand the gravity of Donald Trump winning this nomination. I also know many Americans are blinded by the "straight talk" of a man who speaks to their fears. The Republican Party has already begun the internal damage control, but they're 4o years too late. Defeating Trump is not enough. We must defeat his ideas and the political machine that fosters them. It is now on us voters, the greatest force in American politics, to enable the victory of a progressive executive agenda for another four years and deal a strong rebuke to the forces of hate, fear, and racism in America. Steve brutal - The Harlington Post - March 3.2016 After the most embarrassing display of the absence of moral values, name calling, insults and distortions during the Republican Debate this past Thursday which turned into a warped parody of Animal House' and then have the other three candidates pledge that they would support Donald Trump should he receive the nomination is evidence that they have no courage. At least the one thing that can be said about Donald Trump is that he is fearless in what he says. While the others just say whatever they think that they partisan media and contingencies will gobble up. This is not responsibility. so True EFTA00832443  Inline image I If You Think That Attacking ISIS Will Make America Safe You Are Wrong U.S. presidential candidates are steering the country toward a terror trap. Inline image 2 You would think politicians who like to spout history would learn from it, but somehow they never do.... One of the most recent examples has to be the hysteria about ISIS. For close to a decade, the trauma of the Iraq War left Americans wary of launching new wars in the Middle East. That caution is largely gone. Most of the leading presidential candidates demand that the United States escalate its air war in Iraq and Syria, send additional Special Forces, or enforce a buffer zone, which the head of Central Command, General Lloyd Austin, has said would require deploying U.S. ground troops. Most Americans now favor doing just that. EFTA00832444 The primary justification for this new hawkishness is stopping the Islamic State, or ISIS, from striking the United States. Which is ironic, because at least in the short term, America's intervention will likely spark more terrorism against the United States, thus fueling demands for yet greater military action. After a period of relative restraint, the United States is heading back into the terror trap. To understand how this trap works, it's worth remembering that during the Cold War, the United States had relatively few troops in the Arab and Muslim world. When Ronald Reagan was elected president, Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, did not even exist. All of this changed in 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and President George H. W. Bush dispatched 700,000 troops to expel him and defend Saudi Arabia. After the war was won, thousands stayed to deter Saddam, and to enforce no-fly zones over Iraq. Before the Gulf War, the Saudi native Osama bin Laden and his associates had focused on supporting the Mujahedeen, who were fighting to repel the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan with assistance from the United States. But after the U.S.S.R.'s withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, al-Qaeda turned its attention to the United States, and in particular to America's military presence in Saudi Arabia. In 1992, al-Qaeda issued a fatwa calling for attacks on American troops in the Middle East. After the United States intervened in Somalia later that year, Somali rebels allegedly trained by al-Qaeda shot down two Black Hawk helicopters. In 1995, al-Qaeda operatives took credit for bombing a joint U.S.-Saudi military facility in Riyadh. And in 1996, a truck bomb devastated a building housing U.S. Air Force personnel in the Saudi city of Dhahran. (Although Saudi Hezbollah carried out the attack, the 9/11 Commission noted "signs that al-Qaeda played some role.") That same year, another al-Qaeda fatwa declared, "The latest and the greatest of these Western aggressions ... is the occupation of the land of the two Holy Places": Saudi Arabia. On August 7, 1998, the eighth anniversary of the beginning of that "occupation," al-Qaeda bombed America's embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The fact that al-Qaeda justified its attacks as a response to American "occupation" makes them no less reprehensible, of course. And al-Qaeda might well have struck American targets even had the U.S. not stationed troops on Saudi soil. After all, as a global superpower, the United States was involved militarily all across the world in ways al-Qaeda interpreted as oppressive to Muslims. Still, it's no coincidence that bin Laden and company shifted their focus away from the U.S.S.R. after Soviet troops left Afghanistan and toward the United States after American troops entered Saudi Arabia. Key advisers to George W. Bush recognized this. After U.S. forces overthrew Saddam in 2003, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said one of the benefits "that has gone by almost unnoticed — but it's huge — is that by complete mutual agreement between the U.S. and the Saudi government we can now remove almost all of our forces from Saudi Arabia." The United States, he reasoned, had thus eliminated "a huge recruiting device for al-Qaeda." The Islamic State was bombing Russia because Russia had bombed it. The problem was that to remove thousands of troops from Saudi Arabia, the United States sent more than ioo,000 to invade and occupy Iraq. A dramatic surge in terrorist attacks against American and allied forces ensued. As Robert Pape, the director of the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism at the University of Chicago, has enumerated, the world witnessed 343 suicide attacks from 198o to 2003, about fo percent of them against America and its allies. From 2004 to 2010, by contrast, there were more than 2,40o such attacks worldwide, more than go percent of them against American and coalition forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. EFTA00832445 Many of those attacks were orchestrated by al-Qaeda's Iraqi affiliate, which in 2006 established the Islamic State of Iraq. After weakening in 2007 and 2008 (when the U.S. paid Sunni tribal leaders to fight jihadists), the Islamic State strengthened again as the Obama administration's inattention allowed Iraq's Shia prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, to intensify his persecution of Sunnis. Then, after Syrians rebelled against Bashar al- Assad, the Islamic State expanded across Iraq's western border into Syria, later renaming itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Significantly, when the last American troops left Iraq, in December 2011, ISIS did not follow them home. "In its various incarnations," notes Daniel Byman, a counterterrorism expert who is a professor at Georgetown, the Islamic State "focusedfirst andforemost on its immediate theater of operations." Although ISIS was happy if people inspired by its message struck Western targets, it made little effort to orchestrate such attacks. Research fellows at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment detected only four ISIS-related plots in the West from January 2011 to May 2014. But beginning in the fall of 2014, the number of ISIS-related plots in the West spiked. The Norwegian researchers counted 26 from July 2014 to June 2015 alone. What explains the rise? The most plausible explanation is that the Islamic State started targeting Western countries because they had started targeting it. In August 2014, the United States began bombing ISIS targets to protect the Yazidi religious sect in northern Iraq, which ISIS was threatening with extermination. France joined the air campaign the following month. Since then, ISIS seems to have moved from merely inspiring attacks against the West to actively planning them. November's attacks in Paris, writes Byman, were the "first time that ISIS has devoted significant resources to a mass-casualty attack in Europe." Afterward, ISIS released a video warning the people of France: "As long as you keep bombing you will notfind peace." In the wake of the Paris attacks, the Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio declared that the reason ISIS targets the West is "because we have freedom of speech, because we have diversity in our religious beliefs ... because we're a tolerant society." Yet only weeks earlier, ISIS had downed a Russian airliner over the Sinai, thus targeting the distinctly intolerant regime of Vladimir Putin. The Islamic State's justification for that attack was identical to the one it gave for its attack on France: It was bombing Russia because Russia had bombed it. All of which suggests that the more America intensifies its war against ISIS, the more ISIS will try to strike Americans. And the more terrorism ISIS manages to carry out, the more fiercely America will escalate its air attacks, thus creating the civilian casualties that, according to the International CrISIS Group's Noah Bonsey, "tremendously help the narrative of a jihadi group like the Islamic State." If the public reaction to Paris and the December attack in San Bernardino is any guide, continued jihadist terrorism will also lead to a rising demand for American ground troops. That, argues the French ISIS expert Jean-Pierre Filiu, would be the worst trap America could fall into, because ISIS wants to cast itself as the Islamic world's defender against a new crusader invasion. Despite these dangers, there is a case for attacking ISIS. Part of it is humanitarian: Millions of people now live in a caliphate in which many women cannot leave their homes unless accompanied by a man, and religious minorities can be sold as slaves. Allowing ISIS to expand, and potentially threaten Jordan or Saudi Arabia, would produce misery on an epic scale, intensify the refugee crisis already roiling Europe, and destroy America's reputation as the underwriter of Middle Eastern order. But the war isn't being sold on these grounds. The presidential candidates are not telling Americans that a greater short-term terrorist threat is the price they must pay to liberate oppressed Arabs, protect friendly EFTA00832446 regimes, and prevent a greater danger down the road. Instead, candidates are promising, at least implicitly, that if America intensifies its war, the terrorist threat will decrease. What happens when they're proved wrong? In a political environment where candidates won't admit that ISIS attacks are partly a response, albeit a monstrous one, to the United States' own use of force, further attacks will leave Americans even more bewildered and terrified than they are now. Some will gravitate to politicians who promise that with greater force, including ground troops, they can deliver a decisive military victory. Other Americans, desperate for a quick fix, will support further assaults on the rights of Muslims in the United States. Both impulses will help the Islamic State. And America will slide deeper into the terror trap. The core problem is that most politicians are still selling war on the cheap. They won't admit that, no matter how convinced Americans may be of their good intentions, the violence the U.S. inflicts overseas will lead others to try to do violence to it. The more fervently the U.S. tries to kill ISIS supporters, the more fervently they will try to kill Americans. And in today's interconnected world, they will have more opportunities to strike than ever before. Haven't we learned from our disastrous involvement in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the War on Drugs, as well as the dozens of proxy wars over the past fifty years fought in the Third World that most wars don't work? Also, all wars have unintended consequences. Wars, even necessary ones, are usually costly for both sides. And if the men and women running for president won't admit that, they shouldn't be demanding war at all. More Good News U.S. Economy Adds 242,000 Jobs in February; Unemployment Rate Holds Steady !Mine image 1 In addition to the daily declarations of "gloom and doom" here in America from Republican presidential candidates and their supporters, there has been a lot of concern that the U.S. economy might get dragged down by the rest of the world. Now those worries are on hold thanks to the latest report from the Labor EFTA00832447 Department. It shows employment rebounded last month with a surprisingly strong gain of 242,000 new jobs. As President Obama said in his last State of the Union Address, "anyone claiming that America's economy is in decline is peddling fiction. As of right now, the American economy is the strongest most durable economy in the world" And the statistics bare him out. Inline image 2 Most of February's jobs data was upbeat. More than half a million discouraged workers jumped back into the improving jobs market, part of the best three-month labor force gain since 2000. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.9%, matching an eight-year low. And a total of 30,000 more jobs was added to figures from December and January. The upward revisions meant that even in the face of financial market turmoil and slowing global growth, the U.S. added an average of about 228,000 'net' jobs over the last three months. That was about the same solid pace of job creation as in 2015. "These are not the job reports of which recessions are made," Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group, said of the recent data. "Quite the contrary, these are job reports consistent with continued moderate economic growth." The big jump last month pushed the percentage of Americans 16 years or older in the workforce up to 62.9%. It's the highest labor force participation rate since January 2015, although it remains near its lowest levels since the late 1970s. From December through February, the labor force swelled by 1.5 million people, or 195. That's the best growth since early 2000. Investors were heartened by the latest jobs news. The Dow Jones industrial average increased 62.87 points, or 0.4%, to r7,006.77 on Friday. The broader Standard & Poor's Soo index and tech-heavy NASDAQ saw similar gains. Job gains were concentrated in four sectors: retail sales; leisure and hospitality; education and health services; and construction. EFTA00832448  Inline image 3 We have to wonder why most of our Presidential contenders are only seeing the glass half-empty, when unemployment is under 5%, wages are rising, with no inflation, our auto industry having its best year ever, while cutting the deficit by three-quarters. Again kudos to President Obama and his economic policies — which have generated more than 14.4 million new jobs, totally revived the American economy and returning it to the envy of the rest of the industrialized world. And yes economic inequality still exists, as 58% of the income still goes to the Top 1%. But we are definitely doing better than we were seven years ago, so again kudos to President Obama and his administration. ****** We Have To Reject Him Because he doesn't pass the decency test lit Inline image 1 As an absentee father of three daughters and a son, the only thing that I want for them is that whomever they chose, the person would be decent. This is my word: "decent" Does he or she behave in a decent manner? Will he or she treat my daughter with kindness and respect? Can he be trusted to bring her home on time? In his/her language, actions, and decisions, would he or she be a decent guy or girl? Decency mattered to me as a person and definitely as a dad. I am sure that I am not alone, and decency matters to most Americans. We take note of the person who pays their debts. We appreciate the physician who takes time to listen. When the husband honors his wedding vows, when the teacher makes time for the struggling student, when the employee refuses to gossip about her EFTA00832449 co-worker, when the losing team congratulates the winning team, we can characterize their behavior with the word decent. We appreciate decency. We applaud decency. We teach decency. We seek to develop decency. Decency matters, right? Then why isn't decency doing better in the presidential race? The leading candidate to be the next leader of the free world would not pass my decency interview. I'd send him away. I'd tell my child to stay home. I wouldn't entrust them to his care. And if he persisted, I would show him a shotgun and a shovel and explain that when it comes to the welfare of one of my children, I am not afraid of jail. Like many Americans, I have been chagrined at Donald Trump's antics. He ridiculed a war hero. He made mockery of a reporter's menstrual cycle. He made fun of a disabled reporter. He referred to the former first lady, Barbara Bush as "mommy," and belittled Jeb Bush for bringing her on the campaign trail. He routinely calls people "stupid," "loser," and "dummy." These were not off-line, backstage, overheard, not-to-be-repeated comments. They were publicly and intentionally tweeted, recorded, and presented. Such insensitivities wouldn't even be acceptable even for a middle school student body election. But for the Oval Office? And to do so while brandishing a Bible and boasting of his Christian faith? I'm bewildered, both by his behavior and the public's support of it. The stock explanation for his success is this: he has tapped into the anger of the American people. As one man said, "We are voting with our middlefinger." Sounds more like a comment for a gang-fight than a presidential election. Anger-fueled reactions have caused trouble ever since Cain was angry at Abel. FINALLY: In an extraordinary public rebuke of Donald J. Trump's campaign, Mitt Romney and John McCain, the last two Republican presidential nominees, denounced Mr. Trump in forceful terms on Thursday and warned that his election could put the United States and even its democratic political system in peril. Offering himself as a bulwark against Mr. Trump's march to the nomination, Mr. Romney laid out a precise and lengthy case against Mr. Trump, lacerating his business dealings, his erratic pronouncements on national security and demeaning treatment of women, minorities and the disabled. Mr. Romney warned that Mr. Trump's nomination would be calamitous for the Republican Party and, quoting John Adams, even suggested it could suicidal for the country. Evoking the specter of totalitarianism, Mr. Trump, he said, was amplifying a "brand of anger that has led other nations into the abyss." "His domestic policies would lead to recession," Mr. Romney said. "His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe. He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president." EFTA00832450  Inline image 2 Web Link: and hal2;11 and Web Link: kapsillyoutikbenie1XdC7941 ROMNEY: "If we Republicans choose Donald Trump as our nominee the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished. Even though Donald Trump has offered very few specific economic plans, what little he has said is enough to know that he will be very bad for American workers and for American families. But you say wait, wait, wait. Isn't he a huge business success? Does he know what he is talking about? No he isn't. And no he doesn't. Well Donald Trump tells us that he is very, very, smart. But I'm afraid that when it comes to foreign policy is very, very, not smart. He is not of the temperament of the kind of stable thoughtful person that we need as leader. His imagination must not be married to a real power. Think of Donald Trump's personal qualities — the bullying; the bullying, the greed, the showing the showing off, the misogyny the misogyny, the insured third-grade the absurd third-grade theatrics. You know we have long referred to him as 'The Donald." He is the only person in the entire country where we add article before his name and it wasn't because he had attributes we admired. Here's what I know. Donald Trump is a phony. A fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He is playing the members of the American public for suckers. He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a loser and all we get is a lousy hat. His foreign-policies would make America and the world less safe. He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president. And his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be the shining city on the hill." Mr. McCain, once a rival of Mr. Romney's, effectively linked arms with him soon after his address, saying that he shared Mr. Romney's dismay about Mr. Trump's ascent. Alluding to a public letter released on Thursday by dozens of conservative national security leaders, who vowed never to support Mr. Trump, Mr. McCain echoed their concerns about Mr. Trump's "uninformed and indeed dangerous statements on national security issues." The onslaught against Mr. Trump appeared aimed at sowing new doubts among voters about a man who has taken firm command of the Republican presidential race, and stiffening the resolve of mainstream Republicans to reject Mr. Trump. When my children choose a date, friend or mate they are also entrusting the love of my life with that person. I want that person to be kind, supportive, compassionate and trustworthy with my child, as well as the people around them. I wanted to know if that they are decent. And as serious as the concerns of Romney and McCain, Donald Trump's presidential candidacy should be disqualified because he doesn't pass one of the most basic concerns of almost parents, he has no decency. And if this type of candidate and campaigning is EFTA00832451 not allowed in middle-school election, how can we tolerate in a national election this is my rant of the week.... WEEK's READINGS The notion that Justice is Blind... is a Lie 3 Anger-Inducing Charts About Kids and Prison Inline image 1 Does the justice system think white kids are more redeemable than black kids? In 2005, when the Supreme Court struck down the use of capital punishment sentences for juveniles, it was a step toward greater legal recognition that children are different from adults — that young people's changing brains and social vulnerability make them less culpable for their actions, and that because they are young, they have a greater chance at reform. Another step in this direction came in 2012, in the case Miller v. Alabama, when the justices ruled the use of automatic life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders was unconstitutional. Today, an estimated 2,230 people in the United States are serving life without parole for crimes they committed before they turned 18. (Read the story of Taurus Buchanan, who was automatically sentenced to Velar throwing a single punch when he was in ninth grade). Data collected by the Phillips Black Project, a nonprofit law firm based in San Francisco, reveals striking disparities among people who are serving juvenile life-without-parole sentences in different states. What's more, the numbers, gathered through Freedom of Information Act requests between May and October last year, are almost certainly an under-count. (Read more about how the Phillips Black Project gathered and analyzed the data.) Because most states don't track which sentences were imposed under mandatory EFTA00832452 sentencing schemes and which ones were discretionary, the numbers include all inmates serving juvenile life without parole in 2015. First, here's where juvenile life-without-parole offenders are imprisoned: Inline image 2 What's behind the geographic disparities? In part, the answer comes down to state policy and practice: A few places, like New York, have historically avoided imposing any juvenile life-without-parole sentences, while 16 states now ban it entirely. Other states used mandatory sentencing schemes for decades before the Miller v. Alabama decision. Meanwhile, most states still allow judges to impose a life-without-parole sentence at their discretion. Yet the differences in numbers are even starker on a county-by-county level, says John Mills, Phillips Black's lead researcher on the project. When it comes to throwing juveniles in jail with no chance for parole, the main culprits are officials in a handful of counties with a reputation for seeking and imposing harsh sentences on kids. Philadelphia alone is responsible for sentencing about 9 percent of America's current juvenile life- without-parole inmates, Mills says, and the county used to be known for sentencing juvenile offenders to death: "I suspect that the same culture that led the prosecutor to seek a number of death sentences also informed (his or her] choices about juvenile life without parole." A prosecutor's power comes from his or her decision of which charge — murder or manslaughter—to bring against a suspect, and, in some states, whether to transfer a suspect from juvenile to criminal court. (In some jurisdictions, anyone charged with certain serious crimes must be tried in criminal court, regardless of age.) According to Mills, this prosecutorial discretion is the most important reason why black and Hispanic youth offenders are over represented among the current juvenile life-without-parole inmate population: EFTA00832453  Ia Inline image 3 Louisiana, with 247 juvenile life-without-parole inmates, has the highest number per capita of any state. But consider that while two-thirds of the state population is white, a whopping 81 percent of inmates who are serving juvenile life-without-parole sentences are black; in Arkansas, 8o percent of the population is white and 70 percent of juvenile life inmates are black. In Texas there are 17 people serving juvenile life without parole: 15 are black, 2 are Hispanic, and none are white. In fact, since 1992, black children arrested for murder are twice as likely to end up sentenced to life without parole as white children arrested for murder, the Phillips Black Project found. That doesn't account for policing practices, Mills points out. If police disproportionately arrest young black suspects over young white suspects, the disparity likely runs deeper than it appears. "When we looked at the states that did provide us information about race, it was clear that who was receiving the sentences was troubling," Mills says. 'What we may be seeing is decision-makers discounting the youth ofAfrican Americans, and crediting white youth." The difference can be traced not only to prosecutors, but also to judges and juries, whose decisions may also be influenced by the race of the victim, Mills says: "If the lesson of the death penalty holds, that effect will be even greater when it's a black defendant and a white victim." One strange outcome of the decision to end mandatory sentencing, in Miller v. Alabama, is that even though many fewer juvenile offenders now receive life-without-parole sentences compared with the late gos, there is actually more opportunity for racial bias because sentences are now discretionary. So what about those hundreds of people still behind bars under mandatory juvenile life-without-parole sentences? Since Miller, the states have reacted unevenly. Some, like Louisiana and Pennsylvania, have decided Miller is not retroactive — that is, the automatic sentences imposed before 2012 are still legitimate. Others, including California and Florida, have passed laws and made rulings that allow offenders who received mandatory sentences before Miller to be re-sentenced. Here's the policy breakdown: EFTA00832454  12 Inline image 4 A case pending before the Supreme Court, Montgomery v. Louisiana, will address Miller's retroactivity in the coming weeks. Mills estimates that half of all inmates currently serving juvenile life without parole could become eligible for re-sentencing—at least 1,000 people. And many more could become eligible if states also apply the ruling to de facto "life sentences" that keep juvenile offenders in jail until they die of old age. That's the case in Florida, where a state Supreme Court ruling on Miller's retroactivity last spring qualified about 1,700 offenders for re-sentencing, according to the Tampa Bay Times. Even if the Supreme Court decides the Miller ruling does not have to be applied retroactively, we can expect to see changes in the national population of juvenile life-without-parole inmates, Mills says, because the legal process to get a new sentence is laborious. This means that a lot of inmates who currently qualify for new sentencing hearings in states that applied Miller retroactively are still in prison, waiting for their cases to be heard. These inmates may also face challenges in obtaining skilled legal representation, Mills says. Inmates may not be eligible for a public defender until after they've successfully petitioned the state to grant them a hearing. Some of the cases are more than decade old, requiring a high degree of expertise to argue. (Public defenders in Florida are seeking additionalfi nding to take on the case load, while the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has run seminars on how to argue a re-sentencing proceeding.) All that said, inmates still run the risk of being resentenced to life without parole, even after they've been granted a hearing. Despite the difficulty of the re-sentencing process, the mere shot at a lesser sentence offers hope. And this time around, judges will have to account for the offender's youth at the time of the crime. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan wrote in Miller, "Given all we have said...about children's diminished culpability and heightened capacityfor change, we think appropriate occasionsfor sentencing juveniles to this harshest possible penalty will be uncommon." Whether the Supreme Court will allow that hope for inmates serving juvenile life-without-parole sentences across all states remains an open question. Madison Pauly - Mother Jones - Jan. 4, 2016 Memory That Lasts Forever New Quartz Coin Can Store 36oTB of Data for izt Billion Years EFTA00832455  Inline image 1 Web Link: https://voutu.beitiVD1sXhqin It has been said that go% of all data since the birth of civilization has been created in the last two years and today a group of scientists say that all of it can be stored on a new quartz coin which has the capacity to store 360TE for 14 billion years. Now, you don't have to worry about what will happen to your data after those 30o million years are up— researchers have upped the storage and lifespan of the quartz glass. Your data can be stored safely for 14 billion years. Let's get some perspective: • The Earth is 4.534 billion years old • The Universe is 13.82 billion years old With this in mind, your data is essentially safe forever. Researchers at Southampton University in the UK have developed the technique of storing data digitally using laser light. 36o terabytes of information can fit on one sliver of nano-structured quartz. With this tech, we can store literally the whole of human history. Using nanostructured glass, scientists from the University's Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) have developed the recording and retrieval processes of five dimensional (5D) digital data by femtosecond laser writing. The storage allows unprecedented properties including 36o TB/disc data capacity, thermal stability up to i,000°C and virtually unlimited lifetime at room temperature (13.8 billion years at 190°C) opening a new era of eternal data archiving. As a very stable and safe form of portable memory, the technology could be highly useful for organizations with big archives, such as national archives, museums and libraries, to preserve their information and records. EFTA00832456  Inline image 2 The technique uses femtosecond laser pulses to write data in the 3D structure of quartz at the nanoscale. The pulses create three layers of nanostructred dots, each just microns above the other. The changes in the structure can be read by interrogating the sample with another pulse of light and recording the orientation of the waves after they've passed through. Notably, this is referred to as a 5D storage device. These include the three dimensions of space, which are responsible for describing the physical location of the dot, and two additional dimensions that are encoded by the polarity and intensity of the beam that creates the dot. The storage system, in addition to being long lasting, is also pretty safe—the quartz can withstand up to 157 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit). The technology was first experimentally demonstrated in 2013 when a 300 kb digital copy of a text file was successfully recorded in 5D. Now, major documents from human history such as Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Newton's Opticks, Magna Carta and Kings James Bible, have been saved as digital copies that could survive the human race. A copy of the UDHR encoded to 5D data storage was recently presented to UNESCO by the ORC at the International Year of Light (IYL) closing ceremony in Mexico. The documents were recorded using ultrafast laser, producing extremely short and intense pulses of light. The file is written in three layers of nanostructured dots separated by five micrometres (one millionth of a metre). The self-assembled nanostructures change the way light travels through glass, modifying polarization of light that can then be read by combination of optical microscope and a polarizer, similar to that found in Polaroid sunglasses. Coined as the 'Superman memory crystal', as the glass memory has been compared to the "memory crystals" used in the Superman films, the data is recorded via self-assembled nanostructures created in fused quartz. The information encoding is realized in five dimensions: the size and orientation in addition to the three dimensional position of these nanostructures. Professor Peter Kazansky, from the ORC, says: "It is thrilling to think that we have created the technology to preserve documents and information and store it in space for future generations. This technology can secure the last evidence of our civilization: all we've learnt will not be forgotten." The researchers will present their research at the photonics industry's renowned SPIE — The International Society for Optical Engineering Conference in San Francisco, USA this week. The invited paper, '511 Data Storage by Ultrafast Laser Writing in Glass' was presented on Wednesday 17 February. The team says they are now looking for industry partners to further develop and commercialize this ground-breaking new technology. EFTA00832457 Also, in the same way that the Pioneer Plaque is meant to be a communication tool between us and any extraterrestrial life, these tiny storage systems could someday inform other beings (maybe our far, far, far off descendants) about Earth and humanity after we are long gone. As a result, this technology could be as groundbreaking as the introduction of mass production of printed circuits a half a century ago that led to the personal computer, smart phone, routers, etc. and in terms of memory going from the telegraph to the telephone. How Can We Close The Black-White Sleep Gap? A Harvard researcher examines why African-Americans sleep so much less than whites Inline image 1 Researchers theorize that poor sleep that may be linked to stress caused by discrimination, among other factors, and are trying to help communities of color cope. Although I rarely get any more than six hours a night sleep, I thought that I was just growing older and it wasn't due to race. And then this week I read that a Harvard researcher did a study that suggests that African-Americans (like myself) sleep a lot less than whites here in America. A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that more than one-third of Americans are sleep deprived. But a closer look at the data shows that some groups suffer even higher rates of sleeplessness: on average, only 54.2 percent of non-Hispanic blacks got at least 7 hours of sleep a day, compared to 66.8 percent of non-Hispanic whites. This "black-white sleep gap" gained national attention last year, when a groundbreaking study on race and sleep disturbances published in the journal Sleep found that black Americans got less sleep than white Americans and suffered a higher incidence of disorders like sleep apnea and insomnia. Neither the CDC report nor the research published in Sleep investigated why this is the case, but the lead author of the latter study is working to get answers. "It was impossible to ignore thefact that African-Americans, as a group, are getting the least sleep, and among the worst sleep, of all Americans," Dr. Susan Redline, a Harvard Medical School professor and researcher at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital. According to the CDC study, it's not only black Americans who sleep poorly: respondents who identified as Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders, multiracial and American Indians/Alaska Natives all had low rates of EFTA00832458 adequate sleep. The proportion of those groups who slept at least seven hours a night ranged from 53.6 percent to 59.6 percent, compared to 65.2 percent of all respondents. To investigate why black people don't get enough sleep, Redline spoke to a group of residents in Boston's predominantly black, low-income Mission Hill neighborhood. She is leading a three-year community outreach effort there, funded by the National Institutes of Health, to learn about the obstacles to good sleep. Redline found that the people she spoke with already knew about good sleep hygiene, or the habits conducive to sleeping well on a regular basis. "So it's not like public health guidance is falling on deaf ears. But talking to them makes it clear that there are big practical challenges." Grassroots outreach is important because researchers routinely craft sleep hygiene recommendations without considering how they will be practically applied, Redline said. But it's not just the public health policy that's skewed, she says. The research methods are, too. "Besides the dramatic sleep gap, what became really apparent from our 2015 study was that the tools we've developed to scientifically study sleep were designed for predominantly white -- and particularly, white male -- populations,". She hopes her work with Mission Hill residents will help reveal better ways to survey people about sleep. People in Mission Hill say they face challenges like noisy streets and have trouble creating a sleep schedule because many residents are shift workers. Compliance with medical advice can also be an issue. For example, Redline found that residents with sleep apnea, a disorder marked by halted or shallow breathing during sleep, are less likely to consistently use the CPAP device that treats it. This bears out in population data, even after controlling for socio-economic factors and impediments like affordability. Again even in sleep African Americans seem to get the short end of the stick, contrary to the stereotype. Krithika Varagur — Huffington Post — 02.29.16 3 Breakfast Mistakes to Avoid !Mine image EFTA00832459  Breakfast Mistakes That Wreak Havoc With Your Blood Sugar What do breakfast items like bagels, toast with jam, microwaveable oatmeal, granola, donuts, croissants, scones, muffins, and cereal all have in common? Other than the fact that they're conveniently sized and packaged and taste scrum diddly umptious when warm, they are the makings of an all-out carb fest where your name, my friend, is on the VIP invitation list. With all that going on who can blame you for making them your go-to breakfast option? In today's fast paced world, many of us eat these sorts of foods as a quick energy source in addition to our coffee as we dash out the door Monday through Friday, leaving breakfasts like bacon and eggs to the weekend when we hav