19.6% of Egyptians and 14.5% of Americans live below the poverty line. 21% of Egyptians are considered "near poor," and 40% of Americans will fall below the poverty line at some point in their lives. One in six American children lives in poverty. So do one in four African Americans, which means the poverty rate for African Americans is greater than it is for Egyptians.
Life for the Egyptian poor can be much harsher than we're used to seeing here. Roughly 3.8% of Egyptians live in "extreme poverty," which means they don't have enough to eat on a daily basis. While that level of poverty's much rarer here, 14.7% of US households experienced "food insecurity" in 2009, according to the USDA, a measure which includes uncertainty about the ability to buy enough food and the inability to purchase it. In 2008, 17.3 million Americans lived in a household where one or more people went hungry during the year because there wasn't enough money for food.
Egyptian health statistics aren't all that different from those of African Americans. An African American male born in this country has a shorter life expectancy than an Egyptian (70 years, versus 72.4 years). Infant mortality (the death of a child before his or her first birthday) is much worse in Egypt (25 per 1,000 birth) than it is in the United States (6.9 per 1,000), but African American infant mortality is 14.1 - nearly 2.5 times that of Caucuasians. And the gap between white infant mortality and that of African Americans and Native Americans increased during the last decade, while Egypt's rate continued to improve. | OurFuture.org
Russia has a lot at $take and a lot to lo$e.
The Suez Canal, therefore increasingly becomes important, and our institutional memory informs us of how access to and through it resulted in war decades ago. I don't think the days of fighting over strategic waterways are behind us - whether the Suez Canal or the Bosphorus Straits of Turkey (as I have discussed in previous blogs). Read more...
Also read:Tuesday, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security held a hearing chaired by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) on mandatory internet data retention, a subject with which Congress seems congenitally obsessed. Ostensibly a fact-finding hearing, the true intent of the new House leadership is clearly to revive legislation that has previously stalled.
The extent to which such legislation would impose mandatory data retention on internet service providers (ISPs) is unclear at this time, but previous bills from lawmakers and proposals by law enforcement range from forcing providers to retain data for two years about what IP addresses are assigned to which customers to making them store email and instant messaging data as well as what websites people visit. No matter how such a law would be initially crafted, however, the probability that its scope would expand to cover the most common surfing habits is of deep concern to civil libertarians. Read more...
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The United States has given billion dollars of military aid to Egypt over the last decades. Lockheed Martin, Boeing and General Electric have provided tanks, missiles, engines and more to the Hosni Mubarak regime. Following the massive popular uprising, U.S. foreign aid continues to flow to Egypt, although the Obama administration has placed the program under review. We speak with William Hartung, author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex and Samer Shehata, assistant professor of Arab Politics at Georgetown University. Read transcript
As we reported yesterday, the Egyptian government appears to be locking down Intrernet access in Egypt. Access in or out of the country seems to be blocked. GigaOm provides some analysis on how this might work.
However, some Egyptian Internet users are still able to access the outside Internet. The Washington Post lists some ways that Egyptians are still accessing the Internet. Meanwhile, use of Tor, a free Internet anonymizer, is skyrocketing. Read more...
Anonymity Online: Protect your privacy. Defend yourself against network surveillance and traffic analysis.
Tired of signing into websites and remembering a slew of passwords and user names for each?Also read:
Well, tire no longer as new technology could spell the end for the web of account sign ins and passwords consumer are forced to create if US government has their way.
A single smartcard or fingerprint reader would allow consumer zip from site to site unhindered, under proposals from the U.S. Commerce Dept. - Channel News
400 Studies Had 90 Percent Europeans
Scrutiny of past studies shows that lack of diversity in research has long occurred. A 2009 review of nearly 400 studies worldwide found that more than 90 percent examined only people of European descent. Duke University scientists counted 26 studies including Asians, three with Hispanics, two with Native Americans and none involving African-Americans. Another 11 studies tested people from a mix of racial and ethnic backgrounds. - New America Media
OpenLeaks, the alternative whistleblower site created by WikiLeaks defectors, has officially gone live, though it’s not yet fully operational. The organization confirmed that it doesn’t plan to publish information itself, but rather help third parties (such as nonprofits and news orgs) get access to leaked documents in order to convey them to the public. | Disinformation
“HBCUs will unfortunately never outlive their usefulness and relevancy until America lets go of its obsession with racism. We have witnessed that racism with the election of President Obama and we're years away from it going away. So, HBCUs are necessary,” said Dr. Lee Jones, a former dean at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater. Read more...
Anywhere from 50 to 100 cities in 2011 may be declared bankrupt. This bold prediction, made by financial analyst Meredith Whitney last year in media reports, coupled with mounting debt facing cities and states has financial budget officers and legislative officials on state and local levels in a panic. States are frantically implementing austerity measures, cutting important programs that leave the most vulnerable residents even worse off.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health have shown that predominantly black, low-income neighborhoods in Baltimore were eight times more likely to have carry-out liquor stores than white or racially integrated neighborhoods. Conversely, in higher-income Baltimore neighborhoods a higher percentage of black residents was not associated with a higher per capita number of off-site liquor stores.
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| Dees Illustration |
More than 30% of all herbicides sprayed anywhere contain glyphosate--the world's bestselling weed killer. It was patented by Monsanto for use in their Roundup brand, which became more popular when they introduced "Roundup Ready" crops starting in 1996. These genetically modified (GM) plants, which now include soy, corn, cotton, canola, and sugar beets, have inserted genetic material from viruses and bacteria that allows the crops to withstand applications of normally deadly Roundup.
Definition: Genetically modified (GM) foods are food items that have had their DNA changed through genetic engineering. Unlike conventional genetic modification that is carried out through time-tested conventional breeding of plants and animals. Combining genes from different organisms is known as recombinant DNA technology, and the resulting organism is said to be "genetically modified," "genetically engineered," or "transgenic." GM products include medicines and vaccines, foods and food ingredients, feeds, and fibers. Read more...
Those who manage local farmers markets say there's an emerging demand for the vendor-driven businesses, bringing together health-minded people, area growers and cities hoping to encourage those who like shopping locally to do just that.
The Meteorological Agency raised the volcanic alert to level 3 as ash today continued to spew from Shinmoedake on Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu, and residents have been banned from going within a mile of the volcano following its worst eruption in 50 years. | Mail Online
For the second year in a row, more American soldiers—both enlisted men and women and veterans—committed suicide than were killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Excluding accidents and illness, 462 soldiers died in combat, while 468 committed suicide. Read more...
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| Consumerist |
Prepared by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life, "The Future of the Global Muslim Population" states that Muslims will comprise about 2.2 billion of the world's population by 2030, up from the 2010 estimate of 1.6 billion. Officials state on the Pew Research Center's website that Muslims will make up 26.4 percent of the world's total projected population of 8.3 billion in 2030, up from 23.4 percent of the estimated 2010 world population of 6.9 billion. As the Washington Post is reporting, the percentage of native-born Muslims in the U.S. is projected to rise from 35 percent today to 45 percent in 2030. : Read more...
Reports are emerging that Internet has gone down in Cairo and perhaps throughout Egypt, only hours before the largest planned protests yet.
According to a report from The Arabist, "Egypt has shut off the internet." Read more...
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