Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

France bans citizen journalists from reporting violence

Friday, March 9th, 2007

– This one I definitely put under Culture – how not to do it and Politics – the wrong way.

– This sounds like some thing out of China.

– Something like this perhaps?

– I’ve placed the next post after this one intentionally. It is about a beating a policeman administered to a woman as he was arresting her. It was captured on a camera and is creating quite a row in Britain.

– Now, I have no idea what actually happened with this woman and I am sure that there are good and reasonable circumstances under which a policeman’s use of force like this would be justified. We’ll just have to wait and see how it comes out in the wash. But, the fact that there was a film means that if the beating was inappropriate, it will be dealt with. Without films like this, who knows what might happen and never come to the light of day.

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The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday.

The council chose an unfortunate anniversary to publish its decision approving the law, which came exactly 16 years after Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King were filmed by amateur videographer George Holliday on the night of March 3, 1991. The officers’ acquittal at the end on April 29, 1992 sparked riots in Los Angeles.

More…

Doing Something About ‘Brain Drain’

Wednesday, March 7th, 2007

What, me worry?

– Alfred E. Newman – Mad Magazine

– and some people have the audacity to wonder how it is that the United States is in danger of reverting to a third-world pre-scientific  state based on fundamentalist religion.   

Garsh, Mickey, I don’t know!

– Goofy 

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“Brain drain.” It’s cute and catchy and it rhymes. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a problem. According to some studies, in fact, fewer than 6 percent of high-school seniors in the U.S. are planning on engineering degrees. A decade ago it was 36 percent. In 2000, 56 percent of the undergraduate degrees in China were in the hard sciences. In the U.S., 1 percent.

Part of the problem, according to many experts, is how science and math education are taught in U.S. schools, ranging from everything to how the material is presented to the teacher’s qualifications. According to the October 2005 National Academies report Rising Above the Gathering Storm, about two-thirds of the students studying chemistry and physics in U.S. high schools are taught by teachers without major or certificates in the subject. With math taught in Grades 5-12, its about one-half. And many students are taught math by graduates in physical education.

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U.S. Predicting Steady Increase for Emissions

Sunday, March 4th, 2007

The Bush administration estimates that emissions by the United States of gases that contribute to global warming will grow nearly as fast through the next decade as they did the previous decade, according to a long-delayed ( & ) report being completed for the United Nations.

The document, the United States Climate Action Report, emphasizes that the projections show progress toward a goal Mr. Bush laid out in a 2002 speech: that emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases grow at a slower rate than the economy. Since that speech, he has repeated his commitment to lessening “greenhouse gas intensity” without imposing formal limits on the gases.

Kristen A. Hellmer, a spokeswoman for the White House on environmental matters, said on Friday, “The Climate Action Report will show that the president’s portfolio of actions addressing climate change and his unparalleled financial commitments are working.”

But when shown the report, an assortment of experts on climate trends and policy described the projected emissions as unacceptable given the rising evidence of risks from unabated global warming.

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– This article is from the NY Times and they insist that folks have an ID and a PW in order to read their stuff. You can get these for free just by signing up. However, recently, a friend of mine suggested the website bugmenot.com :arrow: as an alternative to having to do these annoying sign ups. Check it out. Thx Bruce S. for the tip.

Wave farms show energy potential

Sunday, March 4th, 2007

Proponents of clean energy have long seen the oceans as a great hope for the future. Ocean waves carry tremendous power, and could, in theory at least, provide much of the world’s electricity.

But while other sources of renewable energy – such as wind and solar – have been widely adopted in recent years, wave energy has been slow to take off.

But that’s changing. Scottish engineers will soon deploy an offshore “wave farm” in Portugal.

They have also signed a deal to build an even larger farm in Scottish waters.

Click here to see how the wave power system works

Construction of the wave farm in Portugal has been underway for the past year in a busy shipyard in the Portuguese coastal town of Peniche.

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NZ women close the gap

Sunday, March 4th, 2007

– As most of you will know, New Zealand is one of my favorite countries in the world.   Here’s a piece about the advances women are making in New Zealand in terms of gender equality.

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New Zealand is among the top 10 countries in narrowing the gender gap, says a major new report. But we’re still some way off true equality of the sexes.

The Gender Gap Index 2006, a collaboration between Harvard University, London Business School and World Economics Forum, said New Zealand had the seventh-smallest gap between men and women out of 115 countries.

The index measured gaps in economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival and political empowerment.

Our overall score was 0.714, where 1 represented total equality.

We were particularly strong in political empowerment and education, and had relatively more women in high-skilled professions than any other country.

Predictably, Scandinavian countries dominated the top five, with Sweden coming first with a score of 0.813. The United Kingdom came ninth, Australia 15th and the United States 23rd. No country scored a perfect one.

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Women in power

Sunday, March 4th, 2007

– The oppression of women’s human rights, of their freedom to make their own reproductive decisions and of their education all lead to problems. One of these problems is overpopulation which drives many of the other elements of the Perfect Storm Hypothesis. So, it is encouraging to see that women are making gains in some of the world’s nations. This article is from New Zealand, which was the first nation to give women the vote.

– In 1952, the UN opened The Convention for the Political Rights of Women for signatures by its member nations. It took the US until 8 Apr 1976 to join this treaty by accession.

– In 1980, a more comprehensive treaty called The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women was opened for signatures and ratification by the UN member states. To date, the United States is the only industrial nation which has not signed ths treaty.

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The proportion of female politicians around the world has increased with countries such as New Zealand leading the way.

New Zealand’s Parliament is 33.05 per cent female (40 out of 121 MPs) compared with a global figure of 17 per cent – up nearly 6 percentage points in the past decade.

Original story:

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Where to report Spam

Wednesday, February 28th, 2007

I report some of the spam I receive – especially any connected with the banks I use. Today, I wanted to report one which originated from a yahoo E-mail address and I didn’t know where to report it to. In the course of trying to find out, I discovered a great web site which has compiled a ton of E-mail addresses to which you can report many kinds of spam. I suggest you bookmark it – it is a great resource.

http://spamlinks.net/track-report-addresses.htm

And, since we’re on the topic of Spam, isn’t it amazing that you could ask virtually anyone who spends time on the Internet if they think Spam should be outlawed and they would say ‘Yes’. And yet, and yet, we apparently have no effective laws and prosecution against it. Our national representatives find time to slip in every pork-barrel measure they can but, as a group, they cannot unite against an annoyance that 99% of their constituants would like to see banned. It really makes you wonder.

White House: U.S. Invaded Iraq ‘Under U.N. Authorization’

Tuesday, February 27th, 2007

– Ya gotta love the brass of the Administration as they try to rewrite history.  A week or so back, they were also claiming that they have always been staunch environmentalists. 

 Yeah, right !

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In an effort to push back against congressional efforts to rescind the original 2002 Iraq War resolution, White House press spokesman Tony Fratto on Friday argued the United Nations had authorized the initial U.S. invasion of Iraq:

“The president said this isn’t the fight we entered in Iraq, but it’s the fight we’re in,” Fratto told reporters Friday. “We went in as a multinational force under U.N. authorization to take military action in Iraq. We were there as an occupying force, and now we’re there at the invitation of the sovereign, elected government of Iraq.”

Actually, the White House did not invade Iraq “under U.N. authorization.” President Bush had promised to take the issue to the U.N. Security Council “no matter what the whip count,” but never did. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan described the invasion of Iraq as “not in conformity with the UN charter…from the charter point of view, it was illegal.”

To the original post…

5 governors agree to work on climate

Tuesday, February 27th, 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) — Governors from five Western states agreed Monday to work together to reduce greenhouse gases, saying their region has suffered some of the worst of global warming with recent droughts and bad fire seasons.

The governors of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington state agreed that they would develop a regional target to lower greenhouse gases and create a program aimed at helping businesses reach the still-undecided goals.

“In the absence of meaningful federal action, it is up to the states to take action to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in this country,” said Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat. “Western states are being particularly hard-hit by the effects of climate change.”

More…

 

Net Neutrality – A major big deal

Sunday, February 25th, 2007

– I’m convinced these folks are right. We need to maintain Net Neutrality. Big corporations control TV, Radio and Newspapers. Virtually all the news we get is through a one-way pipe; from them to us. And that news has the spin they want to put on it for their good – not ours. Remember, in the end, corporations are entities which exist only to maximize the profits of their stock holders.

– The Internet is the one thing that has happened in recent history wherein media has been recreated as a two-way street available for all of us to use. Big corporations want to take over control of this new media to (1) profit from it by forcing us to pay them for their services and access and (2) to better control the news and information we receive for their benefit.

– We cannot afford to let them do this. Support Net Neutrality and contact your respresentatives and tell them that you do.


Save the Internet | Rock the Vote