tagged w/ Politics
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11 February 2012
Peter Symonds
An Australian defence posture report, released last week, is the latest sign of the Obama administration’s reckless and aggressive push against China on all fronts—diplomatic, economic and military.
The interim review spells out the wide scope of the military agreement announced last November by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and President Barack Obama. While the stationing of up to 2,500 Marines near the northern city of Darwin dominated the headlines, the deal provided for extensive access for American warships and warplanes to Australian naval and air bases.
The report advocates a major upgrading of military facilities in Australia’s north and west that would facilitate expanded American naval and air operations in the Indian Ocean and along the vital shipping routes through South East Asia. By dominating key “choke points” such as the Strait of Malacca, the US has the potential to cut off China’s access to energy and raw materials from Africa and the Middle East in the event of any war.
The Australian media coverage of the defence review could have been drawn from the theatre of the absurd. While the military build-up clearly dovetails with US moves against China, the headlines blared “Move to guard northern wealth” and “Our vulnerable north.” No one answered the obvious question: defend from whom? Given the US-Australian military alliance, no neighbouring country, including China, has the capability to seize Australia’s northern gas fields or invade the country’s “thinly populated north.”
The opening up of northern Australia to US military forces strikes an aggressive, not a defensive, posture that puts the country on the frontline of any US war with China. The media coverage only serves to chloroform working people as to the immense dangers posed by the Labor government’s unconditional support for American militarism. The entire political establishment, from the conservative Liberal-National opposition through the Greens and pseudo-radical groups, is silent on these criminal moves.
The rush to publish an interim report setting out the new Australian military posture was designed to pre-empt any opposition in ruling circles at home amid escalating geo-political tensions. Preparations by the US and its European allies for a political/military intervention in Syria, as well as heightened threats of military action against Iran, cut directly across the economic and strategic interests of China and Russia in particular.
The Obama administration is also stepping up the pressure on China throughout Asia. Washington’s “pivot” toward the Indo-Pacific over the past three years has involved an aggressive diplomatic intervention into territorial disputes in the South China Sea; the tightening of alliances with South Korea and Japan, which have adopted a more confrontational stance toward China and China’s ally North Korea; the strengthening of ties with China’s major regional rival India; and the unveiling of a major trade initiative—the Trans Pacific Partnership—aimed at laying down US terms for regional trade at China’s expense.
In South East Asia, the Obama administration has encouraged the Philippines and Vietnam to more forcefully pursue their maritime disputes with China in the South China Sea that have already produced several clashes. The Philippines is in talks with Washington over a new defence agreement along the lines of the Australian pact. It would lead to a greater US military presence directly adjacent to these sensitive, strategic waters and to southern China itself. At the same time, the Pentagon has been establishing closer ties with Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.
Simultaneously, the Obama administration has worked assiduously to bring about a shift in Burma—formerly China’s closest partner in South East Asia and a potential energy and transport corridor from the Indian Ocean to southern China. Following US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit in December, the US announced an exchange of ambassadors and partially lifted sanctions. Significantly, as reported this week in the New York Times, CIA director David Petraeus plans to visit Burma to forge closer intelligence ties with the military junta.
The authors of the Australian defence posture review are well aware of the US strategy. The document cautiously outlines the “key strategic judgments” on which it was based, including China’s expanding “power projection and sea control capabilities”; “securing sea lines of communication and energy supplies will be a strategic driver”; “the South China Sea remains a potential flashpoint”; and “South East Asia is becoming more important to the wider Asia-Pacific strategic balance.”
The Obama administration’s provocative drive against China has compounded the basic dilemma confronting Australian capitalism: how to balance support for its longstanding strategic ally, the United States, against its heavy dependence on China for mining exports. That Washington will brook no equivocation was demonstrated by its undoubted involvement in the ousting of Kevin Rudd as Australian prime minister in mid-2010. Rudd’s offence in US eyes was seeking to moderate tensions between the US and China, while Obama was intent on boosting pressure on Beijing and demanded firm allies, not diplomatic mediators.
Throughout the region, a similar conundrum confronts governments, which rely on China economically, but are fearful of being on the wrong side of the world’s predominant military power. The rising geo-political tensions have been worsened by the deepening global economic crisis. To stem its relative economic decline, US imperialism is resorting to increasingly reckless military adventures to undermine the growth of potential rivals, above all China.
Fierce rivalry on the international stage is accompanied by a vicious assault on the democratic rights and social position of the working class in every country. As tensions erupt to the surface, the whipping up of chauvinism and jingoism will undoubtedly intensify as the ruling elites seek to block the resistance of workers to their austerity agenda. In Australia, the filthy traditions of anti-Asian paranoia that have formed the stock-in-trade of the political establishment, especially the Labor Party, will be revived.
The only social force that can halt the drive to war is the international working class. The allies of workers in Australia and America are to be found in the Chinese and Asian working class. The closest unity must be forged through a rejection of all forms of nationalism, and the development of a common struggle for a socialist alternative to the capitalist system, which is the fundamental source of social inequality and war.11 February 2012
Peter Symonds
An Australian defence posture report, released... more
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By Tom Carter
9 February 2012
Once again, the Obama administration is demonstrating its lack of commitment to core democratic principles on the critical issue of separation of church and state.
On January 20, the White House announced that it planned to implement federal rules that would require employer health insurance plans, including those of church-affiliated institutions such as Catholic universities, hospitals and charities, to provide access to birth control and contraceptives free of charge. These rules would come into effect in 2013 as part of the Obama administration’s overhaul of the health care system.
The Republican Party and the Catholic Church have responded to this announcement with an escalating offensive in the media, accusing the Obama administration of attacking the “religious freedom” of employers. The various Republican presidential candidates have raced to grandstand in front of the cameras, denouncing Obama as “anti-religious.”
In the face of this attack, the White House is desperately seeking to conciliate with the religious right and the Church. “We will continue to work closely with religious groups during this transitional period to discuss their concerns,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The administration is open to “compromise” on the issue, Obama adviser David Axelrod announced on MSNBC cable TV Tuesday morning.
“We certainly don't want to abridge anyone's religious freedoms, so we're going to look for a way to move forward that both provides women with the preventative care that they need and respects the prerogatives of religious institutions,” Axelrod explained.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney confirmed that “the president is very interested in finding the appropriate balance between religious beliefs and convictions.”
The rules announced by Obama already exempt churches themselves, a major concession to the Catholic Church and the religious right.
This cowering before those who seek to use religion to limit workers’ access to birth control is one more demonstration that the liberal establishment is neither able nor willing to take a principled stand in defense of democratic rights. The only basis for opposing universal access to contraceptives, which are entirely legal, is religious doctrine. But the First Amendment to the US Constitution has historically been understood to bar the government from making religion the basis of law or social policy.
The impact of any compromise on this issue would fall most heavily on the working class. Under conditions of mass unemployment, cuts in social programs and a corporate assault on wages, the cost of contraceptives for millions of families would be prohibitive. On the other hand, unwanted pregnancies threaten economic disaster for families already struggling to make ends meet.
For the wealthy, the impact would be negligible. They have the means to access birth control in all of its forms.
The New York Times on Wednesday published an account of the internal debate within the Obama administration on the contraceptive rule which makes clear that the move was driven entirely by considerations of electoral expediency rather than political principle. Sebelius, Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett and Deputy Chief of Staff Nancy-Ann DeParle argued in favour of the rule as a vote-getter among women in the November election, while Vice President Joseph Biden and other top advisers warned that antagonizing the Catholic Church would harm Obama’s re-election chances.
As always, the response of the Democrats to the latest right-wing attack is to cringe in fear of alienating the most reactionary sections of the political and media establishment. The Times, citing unnamed administration officials, wrote: “One possible compromise might be to emulate Hawaii, where the rule is in effect, but where employers at religious institutions that do not offer free contraception can get birth control through side benefits, which the employees nominally pay for but which often end up being free.”
The leading figures of the American Revolution of 1776 had nothing but contempt for the entanglement of religion and politics, which they identified with the Dark Ages. In discussions over the First Amendment, Thomas Jefferson called for a “wall of separation” between church and state. James Madison declared that “there is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermeddle with religion.” Madison famously opposed allowing “three pence” of public funds to be spent on religion.
Nearly two and a half centuries later, these sentiments and principles have disappeared from the American political establishment.
Twenty eight states already require all employers, including “faith-based” ones, to provide access to contraceptives through their employee health plans. Moreover, there is overwhelming support in the population, including a majority of Catholics, for providing such contraceptives free of cost.
It is by no means clear whether the Obama administration will reverse itself, or whether it will adopt a sordid compromise along the lines suggested by the New York Times. The internal differences in the administration are evidence that bourgeois electoral considerations militate in both directions.
Any backtracking by the Obama administration, however, would cast a shadow over the existing state laws that require religious employers to provide access to contraception in their employee health plans.By Tom Carter
9 February 2012
Once again, the Obama administration is... more
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What would happen if the Federal Reserve was shut down permanently? That is a question that CNBC asked recently, but unfortunately most Americans don't really think about the Fed much. Most Americans are content with believing that the Federal Reserve is just another stuffy government agency that sets our interest rates and that is watching out for the best interests of the American people. But that is not the case at all. The truth is that the Federal Reserve is a private banking cartel that has been designed to systematically destroy the value of our currency, drain the wealth of the American public and enslave the federal government to perpetually expanding debt. During this election year, the economy is the number one issue that voters are concerned about. But instead of endlessly blaming both political parties, the truth is that most of the blame should be placed at the feet of the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve has more power over the performance of the U.S. economy than anyone else does. The Federal Reserve controls the money supply, the Federal Reserve sets the interest rates and the Federal Reserve hands out bailouts to the big banks that absolutely dwarf anything that Congress ever did. If the American people are ever going to learn what is really going on with our economy, then it is absolutely imperative that they get educated about the Federal Reserve.What would happen if the Federal Reserve was shut down permanently? That is a... more
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For anyone paying attention, there is no shortage of issues that fundamentally challenge the underpinning moral infrastructure of American society and the values it claims to uphold. Under the conceptual illusion of liberty, few things are more sobering than the amount of Americans who will spend the rest of their lives in an isolated correctional facility – ostensibly, being corrected.For anyone paying attention, there is no shortage of issues that fundamentally... more
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A report the Transportation Security Administration doesn’t want you to see: While Americans the country over are being scrutinized as extremists for seemingly innocent activities like paying cash when shopping or advocating a return to equality under Constitutional law, the Department of Homeland Security continues to employ personnel that wouldn’t pass basic background checks or psychological profiles. http://www.thedailysheeple.com/crimes-of-the-tsa-agents_022012A report the Transportation Security Administration doesn’t want you to see:... more
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As AFP predicted in the Feb. 6 edition, the call by the publisher of The Atlanta Jewish Times, Andrew Adler, for Israel’s Mossad to utilize its American-based assets to assassinate Barack Obama has been almost entirely suppressed by the mainstream media. In contrast, the story has been big news in Israel and widely reported in Jewish community newspapers all across America.
Most astonishing—in response to Adler’s provocation—is that there are many Jewish writers openly acknowledging there is a deep hatred for Obama within the Jewish community, which most Americans presume to be strongly supportive of the president.
And although there have been attempts to paint Adler’s Atlanta Jewish Times as being somehow without influence, one of Adler’s regular columnists is Chuck Berk, a leader of the Republican Jewish Coalition, who—as recently as Dec. 30—was pictured in the Times in the company of Israel’s consul general in Atlanta, along with the governor of Georgia and several state senators.
In the meantime, Scotty Reid—columnist for a black-oriented Internet site, ThyBlackMan, raised important questions: “Are there Israeli assassination teams in the U.S.? If Israeli Mossad agents are based in the United States, what they are doing?”
Reid also noted that, “Adler is not just some crazed or mentally impaired individual publishing outlandish conspiracy theories.” Instead, Reid emphasized, Adler is not only publisher of a weekly newspaper but also producer of a local television show on which he has interviewed a number of Israeli government officials.
While JTA suggested most Jews still claim to support Obama, it did not mention that polls showing significant Jewish opposition to Obama could be enough to cause Obama to lose the electoral votes of key states, particularly in the Northeast, where politically active Jews in large numbers reside.As AFP predicted in the Feb. 6 edition, the call by the publisher of The Atlanta... more
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If the global economy is not heading for a recession, then why is global shipping slowing down so dramatically? Many economists believe that measures of global shipping such as the Baltic Dry Index are leading economic indicators. In other words, they change before the overall economic picture changes. For example, back in early 2008 the Baltic Dry Index began falling dramatically. There were those that warned that such a rapid decline in the Baltic Dry Index meant that a significant recession was coming, and it turned out that they were right. Well, the Baltic Dry Index is falling very rapidly once again. In fact, on February 3rd the Baltic Dry Index reached a low that had not been seen since August 1986. Some economists say that there are unique reasons for this (there are too many ships, etc.), but when you add this to all of the other indicators that Europe is heading into a recession, a very frightening picture emerges. We appear to be staring a global economic slowdown right in the face, and we all need to start getting prepared for that.If the global economy is not heading for a recession, then why is global shipping... more
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11 Lessons learned during the '11 political season! Hopefully the rest of us are keeping up with the learning curve!11 Lessons learned during the '11 political season! Hopefully the rest of us are... more
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Greatest Generation telling their history of America before it is lost forever. A wonderful project.
A LIVING HISTORY
I saw this on Nightly News with Brian Williams... It was so poignant; a ten tissue event (a whole box if it had lasted longer than a few minutes).
I downloaded it so that I could share it on thethinkingblue youtube channel...
Amid all the nasty nonsense of this election season, we all need a proverbial breath of fresh air to realize we are not all NUTS!
Watch the courageous people of the Greatest Generation, as they
reflect upon America's recent heroic past.
And to Gingrich, Romney, Karl Rove, Limbaugh, Fox News and the rest of the obnoxious ones who try to spread reprehensible falsehoods about those they wish to destroy through character assassination, in
order to gain power... TAKE A HIKE, WE are tired of you!
Watch as real heroes who live amongst us tell their stories.
A SALUTE TO THE GREATEST GENERATION AND THEIR LIVING HISTORY.
thethinkingblue youtube channel
http://www.thethinkingblue.com
http://thinkingblue.blogspot.comGreatest Generation telling their history of America before it is lost forever. A... more
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A rabbi defends 'poor man' Andrew Adler for saying Obama should be assassinated.
Even though this issue been covered on most mainstream news sites such as CNN, and Israeli newspapers, I haven't heard anything from the broadcast teevee news.
Usually when someone makes a threat on the president, even if it is just on Facebook, it makes the nightly teevee news.
If this story has been broadcast on the nightly teevee news, please link to the video of the broadcast if possible.A rabbi defends 'poor man' Andrew Adler for saying Obama should be... more
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Despite what all the media are yammering at you, despite all the fear mongering about Iran's 'nuclear threat' (Iran has been fully verified by the IAEA and ALL the U.S. intelligence community agree and are on record that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons - SEE ABOVE VIDEO CLIP), despite talk that Iran is intolerant, despite the daily barrage of bad press and unpleasant innuendo, Iran is a great country, friendly, cultured, fun and spiritually-minded!
The 'Powers That Were' are dead set on taking us to war against Iran, but 'They lied about Vietnam... Iraq...Afghanistan...'
and 'Iran Is NOT Our Enemy!' http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yjNLFQvDHxo#!Despite what all the media are yammering at you, despite all the fear mongering about... more
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By recklessly escalating the economic embargo and military threats against Iran, the US, Israel and the European powers are heightening the danger of a slide into war that has the potential to engulf the region and to spread internationally. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jan2012/iran-j27.shtmlBy recklessly escalating the economic embargo and military threats against Iran, the... more
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There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.
The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.
"Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood," he said.
The findings combine three hot-button topics.
"They've pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics," said Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. "When one selects intelligence, political ideology and racism and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it's bound to upset somebody."
Polling data and social and political science research do show that prejudice is more common in those who hold right-wing ideals that those of other political persuasions, Nosek told LiveScience. [7 Thoughts That Are Bad For You]
"The unique contribution here is trying to make some progress on the most challenging aspect of this," Nosek said, referring to the new study. "It's not that a relationship like that exists, but why it exists."
Brains and bias
Earlier studies have found links between low levels of education and higher levels of prejudice, Hodson said, so studying intelligence seemed a logical next step. The researchers turned to two studies of citizens in the United Kingdom, one that has followed babies since their births in March 1958, and another that did the same for babies born in April 1970. The children in the studies had their intelligence assessed at age 10 or 11; as adults ages 30 or 33, their levels of social conservatism and racism were measured. [Life's Extremes: Democrat vs. Republican]
In the first study, verbal and nonverbal intelligence was measured using tests that asked people to find similarities and differences between words, shapes and symbols. The second study measured cognitive abilities in four ways, including number recall, shape-drawing tasks, defining words and identifying patterns and similarities among words. Average IQ is set at 100.
Social conservatives were defined as people who agreed with a laundry list of statements such as "Family life suffers if mum is working full-time," and "Schools should teach children to obey authority." Attitudes toward other races were captured by measuring agreement with statements such as "I wouldn't mind working with people from other races." (These questions measured overt prejudiced attitudes, but most people, no matter how egalitarian, do hold unconscious racial biases; Hodson's work can't speak to this "underground" racism.)
As suspected, low intelligence in childhood corresponded with racism in adulthood. But the factor that explained the relationship between these two variables was political: When researchers included social conservatism in the analysis, those ideologies accounted for much of the link between brains and bias.
People with lower cognitive abilities also had less contact with people of other races.
"This finding is consistent with recent research demonstrating that intergroup contact is mentally challenging and cognitively draining, and consistent with findings that contact reduces prejudice," said Hodson, who along with his colleagues published these results online Jan. 5 in the journal Psychological Science.
A study of averages
Hodson was quick to note that the despite the link found between low intelligence and social conservatism, the researchers aren't implying that all liberals are brilliant and all conservatives stupid. The research is a study of averages over large groups, he said.
"There are multiple examples of very bright conservatives and not-so-bright liberals, and many examples of very principled conservatives and very intolerant liberals," Hodson said.
Nosek gave another example to illustrate the dangers of taking the findings too literally.
"We can say definitively men are taller than women on average," he said. "But you can't say if you take a random man and you take a random woman that the man is going to be taller. There's plenty of overlap."
Nonetheless, there is reason to believe that strict right-wing ideology might appeal to those who have trouble grasping the complexity of the world.
"Socially conservative ideologies tend to offer structure and order," Hodson said, explaining why these beliefs might draw those with low intelligence. "Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice."
In another study, this one in the United States, Hodson and Busseri compared 254 people with the same amount of education but different levels of ability in abstract reasoning. They found that what applies to racism may also apply to homophobia. People who were poorer at abstract reasoning were more likely to exhibit prejudice against gays. As in the U.K. citizens, a lack of contact with gays and more acceptance of right-wing authoritarianism explained the link. [5 Myths About Gay People Debunked]
Simple viewpoints
Hodson and Busseri's explanation of their findings is reasonable, Nosek said, but it is correlational. That means the researchers didn't conclusively prove that the low intelligence caused the later prejudice. To do that, you'd have to somehow randomly assign otherwise identical people to be smart or dumb, liberal or conservative. Those sorts of studies obviously aren't possible.
The researchers controlled for factors such as education and socioeconomic status, making their case stronger, Nosek said. But there are other possible explanations that fit the data. For example, Nosek said, a study of left-wing liberals with stereotypically naïve views like "every kid is a genius in his or her own way," might find that people who hold these attitudes are also less bright. In other words, it might not be a particular ideology that is linked to stupidity, but extremist views in general.
"My speculation is that it's not as simple as their model presents it," Nosek said. "I think that lower cognitive capacity can lead to multiple simple ways to represent the world, and one of those can be embodied in a right-wing ideology where 'People I don't know are threats' and 'The world is a dangerous place'. ... Another simple way would be to just assume everybody is wonderful."
Prejudice is of particular interest because understanding the roots of racism and bias could help eliminate them, Hodson said. For example, he said, many anti-prejudice programs encourage participants to see things from another group's point of view. That mental exercise may be too taxing for people of low IQ.
"There may be cognitive limits in the ability to take the perspective of others, particularly foreigners," Hodson said. "Much of the present research literature suggests that our prejudices are primarily emotional in origin rather than cognitive. These two pieces of information suggest that it might be particularly fruitful for researchers to consider strategies to change feelings toward outgroups," rather than thoughts.There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may... more
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Consider the following when debating the issue terrorism and why we need the Travel Suppression Agency (TSA)
***
Scientists note that fear of terrorism makes people stupid.
As I’ve repeatedly noted, FBI agents and CIA intelligence officials, constitutional law expert professor Jonathan Turley, Time Magazine, and the Washington Post have all said that U.S. government officials “were trying to create an atmosphere of fear in which the American people would give them more power”.
Indeed, the former Secretary of Homeland Security – Tom Ridge – admits that he was pressured to raise terror alerts to help Bush win reelection.
In the real world, as the National Safety Council notes:
– You are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack
– You are 12,571 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack
— You are 11,000 times more likely to die in an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane
— You are 1048 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack
–You are 404 times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack
— You are 87 times more likely to drown than die in a terrorist attack
– You are 13 times more likely to die in a railway accident than from a terrorist attack
–You are 12 times more likely to die from accidental suffocation in bed than from a terrorist attack
–You are 9 times more likely to choke to death on your own vomit than die in a terrorist attack
–You are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist
–You are 8 times more likely to die from accidental electrocution than from a terrorist attack
– You are 6 times more likely to die from hot weather than from a terrorist attack
(Moreover, the chair of the 9/11 Commission said that the attack was preventable).Consider the following when debating the issue terrorism and why we need the Travel... more
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When the Boston Bruins travelled to Washington on Monday to visit with President Barack Obama, the team was missing goaltender Tim Thomas. Thomas refused to attend the ceremony honoring the 2011 Stanley Cup champions because he does not support the current administration. The Tim Thomas White House snub has stirred up outrage from some NHL fans who think should not have put his personal feelings above his team. Others, however, feel the Boston Bruins player was justified in expressing his personal feelings by bowing out of the event.When the Boston Bruins travelled to Washington on Monday to visit with President... more
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Police in the Kaliningrad region have mistaken a marathon for a gay pride parade.
Several athletes gathered in the town center of Sovetsk on Saturday for the run, but were approached by police, who detained some of them, including teenagers.
Police later explained they had been falsely tipped-off about a planned but illegal gay pride march in the town.
Organizing pride parades has long been a big problem among activists in Russia’s gay community.
In Moscow, they have been unsuccessfully applying for permission to hold a parade for several years – with former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov branding them "satanic" on one occasion.
With Luzhkov replaced by Sergey Sobyanin, the LGBT community hoped for change, but the new mayor deemed such events in the capital to be “unnecessary.”
The bans have always been warmly supported by the Russian Orthodox Church, with its officials supporting what they say is the authorities' right to ban any propaganda based on its potential moral damage to the people.
In July 2011, Russia paid 30,000 euros in compensation to gay activists over its decision to ban so-called pride marches.
The fine was issued by the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled that the decision to repeatedly ban gay pride parades in 2006, 2007 and 2008 was unlawful.Police in the Kaliningrad region have mistaken a marathon for a gay pride parade.... more
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CNN...
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THE CNN FREEDOM PROJECT ENDING MODERN-DAY SLAVERY
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January 19th, 2012
12:03 PM ET
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Child slavery and chocolate: All too easy to find
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In "Chocolate's Child Slaves," CNN's David McKenzie travels into the heart of the Ivory Coast to investigate children working in the cocoa fields.
(More information and air times on CNN International.)
By David McKenzie and Brent Swails, CNN
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CLICK ON CNN LINK (at top) TO VIEW THREE VIDEOS
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Daloa, Ivory Coast (CNN) - Chocolate’s billion-dollar industry starts with workers like Abdul. He squats with a gang of a dozen harvesters on an Ivory Coast farm.
Abdul holds the yellow cocoa pod lengthwise and gives it two quick cracks, snapping it open to reveal milky white cocoa beans. He dumps the beans on a growing pile.
Abdul is 10 years old, a three-year veteran of the job.
He has never tasted chocolate.
During the course of an investigation for CNN’s Freedom Project initiative - an investigation that went deep into the cocoa fields of Ivory Coast - a team of CNN journalists found that child labor, trafficking and slavery are rife in an industry that produces some of the world’s best-known brands.
It was not supposed to be this way.
After a series of news reports surfaced in 2001 about gross violations in the cocoa industry, lawmakers in the United States put immense pressure on the industry to change.
“We felt like the public ought to know about it, and we ought to take some action to try to stop it,” said Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who, together with Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, spearheaded the response. “How many people in America know that all this chocolate they are eating - candies and all of those wonderful chocolates - is being produced by terrible child labor?”
But after intense lobbying by the cocoa industry, lawmakers weren’t able to push through a law. What they got was a voluntary protocol, signed by the heads of the chocolate industry, to stop the worst forms of child labor “as a matter of urgency.” One of the key goals was to certify the cocoa trade as child-labor free.
“It was meant to achieve the end of child slave labor in cocoa fields,” Engel said.
It didn’t.
UNICEF estimates that nearly a half-million children work on farms across Ivory Coast, which produces nearly 40% of the world’s supply of cocoa. The agency says hundreds of thousands of children, many of them trafficked across borders, are engaged in the worst forms of child labor.
A recent study by Tulane University says the industry’s efforts to stop child labor are “uneven” and “incomplete” and that 97% of Ivory Coast’s farmers had not been reached. But the industry’s main representative in the country disagrees with the assessment.
“I think the situation has improved exponentially,” said Rabola Kagohi, country director for the International Cocoa Initiative, the chocolate industry’s answer to fighting child labor and trafficking. “Today, the message is physically getting through.”
Kagohi works out of a basement office with one other permanent employee.
“There are some results,” he said. “I wish that you had spoken to some planters.”
None of the farmers CNN spoke to in the heart of the cocoa production region said they had ever been reached by the International Cocoa Initiative, the government or chocolate companies about child trafficking.
Children such as Abdul don’t know anything about protocols or certification. All they know is work.
When Abdul’s mother died, a stranger brought him across the border to the farm. Abdul says all he’s given is a little food, the torn clothes on his back, and an occasional tip from the farmer. Abdul is a modern child slave.
And he is not the only youngster working in his group.
Yacou insisted he is 16, but his face looks far younger.
“My mother brought me from Burkina Faso when my father died,” he said.
Scars crisscross Yacou’s legs from a machete. He can’t clear grass in the cocoa fields without cutting himself. During harvest season, he works day after day hacking the cocoa pods.
The emotional scars run much deeper.
“I wish I could go to school. I want to read and write,” he said. But Yacou hasn’t spent a single day in school, and he has no idea how to leave the farm.
“It makes me angry,” Engel said. As far as he’s concerned, the chocolate companies haven't done enough.
“They are working with us, and we are glad that they are working with us. But they could do better.”
One of the major players in the Ivory Coast cocoa trade is, not surprisingly, the Ivorian government. Although the country has cornered a vast chunk of a lucrative market, it is considered one of the world’s poorest by any measure.
But the government leadership blames politics and war for the problems in the cocoa industry.
“Thirty years of political instability caused a lot of damage to our economy generally, and to the agricultural sector particularly, and more specifically to the cocoa industry,” said Ivory Coast’s minister of agriculture, Sangafowa Coulibaly. “Unfortunately, these years have been lost.”
After an attempted coup in 2002, the country was split in half and kept from all-out civil war by the United Nations. There was protracted violence after the last disputed presidential elections, when then-President Laurent Gbagbo refused to concede.
With the new government of Alassane Ouattara in charge, the government says it can now put much-needed reforms in place.
“Things can only get better,” Coulibaly said. “The main reason is that today, the political crisis is behind us, the armed conflict is behind us.”
But many observers believe that a new government won’t make it a priority to stop slavery in the cocoa fields.
And with peace, traffickers are free to do their work again. U.N. officials told CNN that the Ivory Coast conflict actually helped slow down trafficking because people were too afraid to move across borders.
Contrary to the promises of action, CNN’s investigation could only find promises. And those promises are empty to children like Abdul and Yacou.
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Post by: CNN's Brent Swails, CNN's David McKenzie
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THE CNN FREEDOM PROJECT ENDING MODERN-DAY SLAVERY
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January 19th,... more
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SOPA has been shelved indefinitely, but the Senate Protect IP bill is still in play. The Internet has proved to be a powerful force speaking out against SOPA and PIPA. Wikipedia, Reddit and other sites still plan to go dark on Wednesday to protest the proposals, which legislators had tried to push through before the public outcry began.
The current.com community has been tracking updates on SOPA and PIPA. Should the Internet make an effort to keep pressure on Congress in anticipation of future moves like this? With sites like Reddit becoming activist in nature, what other causes could this activism be channeled toward?
Edit: As of Tuesday afternoon, TechCrunch is reporting that SOPA is not, in fact, shelved indefinitely but according to remarks from Rep. Lamar Smith, expected to resume in February.
Tune into "The Young Turks" tonight at 7/6c to hear Reddit general manager Erik Martin talk about SOPA/PIPA. "The Young Turks" re-airs at 10/9c.SOPA has been shelved indefinitely, but the Senate Protect IP bill is still in play.... more
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Unfortunately for James the candidate, he now finds himself embroiled in a controversy that has gone viral. Just Google “Craig James killed five hookers” and you’ll see what I mean. The story has even infiltrated a site dedicated to soliciting donations for James, with one donor insinuating a poem with a clever acrostic calling James a “hooker killer.”Unfortunately for James the candidate, he now finds himself embroiled in a controversy... more
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