[Straits Times] TWO women were issued summonses for not wearing T-shirts with sleeves reaching their elbows while on duty at a motor company in Kota Baru last week, Sin Chew Daily reported.
The women, who were wearing the T-shirts promoting the company's new car series, were cited by a Kota Baru Municipal Council enforcement officer.
The company's managing director was upset over the summons, saying the council was moving backwards by implementing such a rule.
'The sleeves already covered their elbows but they were told it did not abide by the dress code for Mohammedan women,' he said, adding that he would pay the summonses for his employees.
The council's public relations chief Azman Dahan refuted the claim that enforcement officers only picked on Chinese operators and businessmen.
He urged operators and businessmen to follow the municipal council's by-laws as the council would be intensifying its enforcement.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
Warren Christopher, a former US secretary of state who worked to end the war in Bosnia and negotiated the release of American hostages in Iran, has died, aged 85.
He "passed away peacefully, surrounded by family at his home in Los Angeles" of complications from kidney and bladder cancer, local media quoted his family as saying in a statement on Friday.
As the chief US statesman under former president Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997, Christopher was a behind-the-scenes negotiator. Often called the "stealth" secretary of state, he was known for his understated, self-effacing manner.
"Careful listening may be the secret weapon," the New York Times quoted him as saying in a 1981 speech when he was deputy secretary of state. "I observed some time ago that I was better at listening than at talking."
That "secret weapon" helped Christopher weather diplomatic crises.
In 1995, he intervened during the crucial final days of the US-brokered Bosnian peace talks at Dayton, Ohio. He had an important role in closing the deal, according to his then deputy, Richard Holbrooke, the force behind the agreement.
As secretary of state, Christopher devoted much of his time to the Middle East. He made at least 18 trips to the region in pursuit of peace and a ceasefire in southern Leb between Israel and Hezbullies.
In 1994, he witnessed the signing of a peace treaty between Jordan and Israel.
As Jimmy Carter's ... the worst president ever. Maybe the second worst. The votes aren't all in yet... deputy secretary of state, he negotiated the release of 52 Americans taken hostage at the US embassy in Tehran in 1979. The hostages were freed on January 20, 1981, minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in to succeed Carter as president.
He also helped negotiate the Panama Canal treaty, worked on establishing normal relations with China and played a major role in developing Carter's human-rights policies.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
He said it was Mr. Christophers decision to challenge the Florida result, even as most Republicans and some prominent Democrats were urging Mr. Gore to concede. People dont remember how controversial that effort was. Without Chriss stature and credibility, Im not sure we would have gotten as far as we did, Mr. Klain said.
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/20/2011 10:38 Comments ||
Top||
#5
#3: "Hahahahahahaha! Sorry."
You certainly are.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/20/2011 10:56 Comments ||
Top||
A large oil slick 12-miles wide by 100-miles long has been spotted off Grand Isle, Louisiana. Supposedly skimming operations have been under way for at least 24 hours now. The suspected source is Total's Matterhorn Field in Mississippi Canyon 243.
Photos at the link.
FUKUSHIMA, Japan (AP) Japan announced the first signs that contamination from its tsunami-crippled nuclear complex have seeped into the food chain, saying that radiation levels in spinach and milk from farms near the facility exceeded government safety limits. More at story from AP. Including a lot about how the amount of radiation is very low, especially from Japanese authorities keen to talk the danger down.
Note: The effects of radiation are cumulative. There is no "safe" dose of radiation. Low doses create statistically low incidences of cancer, which increase as the radiation increases. Any increase in radiation levels gives a corresponding increase in the number of cancers, deformities and genetic mutations in a given population, with even low-dose medical X-rays slightly increasing the cancer rate.
Extra note: Fred apologies if this post appears double, something went wrong the first time I think, am trying again.
FUKUSHIMA, Japan (AP) Japan announced the first signs that contamination from its tsunami-crippled nuclear complex have seeped into the food chain, saying that radiation levels in spinach and milk from farms near the facility exceeded government safety limits. More at story from AP. Including a lot about how the amount of radiation is very low, especially from Japanese authorities keen to talk the danger down.
Note: The effects of radiation are cumulative. There is no "safe" dose of radiation. Low doses create statistically low incidences of cancer, which increase as the radiation increases. Any increase in radiation levels gives a corresponding increase in the number of cancers, deformities and genetic mutations in a given population, with even low-dose medical X-rays slightly increasing the cancer rate.
#1
A banana equivalent dose is a concept occasionally used by nuclear power proponents[1][2] to place in scale the dangers of radiation by comparing exposures to the radiation generated by a common banana.
Many foods are naturally radioactive, and bananas are particularly so, due to the radioactive potassium-40 they contain. The banana equivalent dose is the radiation exposure received by eating a single banana. Radiation leaks from nuclear plants are often measured in extraordinarily small units (the picocurie, a millionth of a millionth of a curie, is typical). By comparing the exposure from these events to a banana equivalent dose, a more intuitive assessment of the actual risk can sometimes be obtained.
The average radiologic profile of bananas is 3520 picocuries per kg, or roughly 520 picocuries per 150g banana.[3] The equivalent dose for 365 bananas (one per day for a year) is 3.6 millirems (36 μSv). - wattsupwiththat.com
#2
that's right, procopious, who cares what scientists and doctors say...
radiation is healthy for you like bananas, and nuclear power is great for everyone.
In fact it's grand that Indonesia, sitting on the rim of fire and raddled with graft and corruption, wants to build about 8 of them, including one on top of a volcano.
Hopefully they will so that we Australians can get some good healthy radiation just like the bananas give us.
We are so lucky the French used to blow up their nukes over Mururoa Atoll and the British at Maralinga, ensuring we would have some healthy atom decay in our food cycle too.
#3
Until solid numbers are presented I can't get excited. Any pilot has exposure, as does anyone who has an xray, CAT scan, ect. Food can be washed or quarantined. Just because it can be detected does NOT mean it's dangerous.
#6
..radiation is healthy for you like bananas, and nuclear power is great for everyone.
It's irrelevant given that radiation is a natural aspect of living in this universe. I'll reiterate that solar radiation kills tens of thousands every year. Yet without it, most living organism on the surface of this planet wouldn't survive. Excess in either direction have consequences. It's just like the planet itself, a little too closer and it'll burn, a little too farther out and it'll freeze.
#7
Nuke power has risks, but US reactors have killed no one - directly. Coal power, on the other hand, kills regularly in coal mining and railroad accidents, and indirectly (sort of like radiation) through lung disease and numerous other diseases.
Nuke power costs about one-fourth that of coal, and one-eighth the cost of gas-fired powerplants, and contributes far less to the bane of the 21st century - MANMADE GLOBAL WARMING.
Wind power, in addition to killing flying annimals, takes about 60 times the land area of nukes see the WaPo graphic.
Life has risks. The intelligent weighing of those risks is ... intelligent.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/20/2011 8:05 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Spinach is a plant sponge for metal contaminants, so much so that growing spinach in contaminated soil is seen as a way to accelerate decontamination. Grow a crop then harvest it and dispose as toxic waste.
Brassica juncea and Brassica carinata, two members of the mustard family. Chromium, lead, copper, and nickel.
Corn, Zea mays, can take up incredibly high levels of lead.
Transgenic tobacco uptakes trinitrotoluene (TNT).
Alpine pennycress. Zinc, cadmium, and uranium, if soil is treated first with citrate to make the uranium more bioavailable.
A pigweed called Amaranthus retroflexus, was up to 40 times more effective than other plants tested in removing radiocesium (cesium-137) if soil is treated first with ammonium.
#12
This is just another reason for Japanese kids to refuse to eat their spinach.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
03/20/2011 13:46 Comments ||
Top||
#13
Burning coal tends to release the radioactive contaminants of coal into the atmosphere unless the emissions are specially scrubbed, and I don't know how effective that is or has been. From the amount of coal which has been burned, I would guess many more will have died from radioactive contamination caused by burning coal than have died from fallout from atmospheric testing & all nuclear plant problems combined.
No radiation poisoning for electricity!
#14
Interesting graphic here. It's a lot safer, just from a radiation perspective, to live near a nuke plant than coal. But neither is really dangerous. I keep waiting for someone to tell me how much radiation we were exposed to in the 1950s before the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty. Probably the reason for all the problems with boomers.
#15
We po' folks in Colorado, especially those living in or near the mountains, are subjected to even greater amounts of radiation - from radon gas as granite breaks down, and from being just that much closer (anywhere from 3800 feet to 14,000+ feet) to the sun. People in Colorado, on average, are healthier than those in most other areas.
Posted by: OId Patriot ||
03/20/2011 15:07 Comments ||
Top||
#16
So I guess the upside is these contaminated products will have a longer shelf life, right?
Posted by: Jefferson ||
03/20/2011 16:28 Comments ||
Top||
#17
That's cold, Jefferson.
Funny though. ;-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/20/2011 17:14 Comments ||
Top||
#18
Note: The effects of radiation are cumulative. There is no "safe" dose of radiation. Low doses create statistically low incidences of cancer, which increase as the radiation increases.
Incorrect. It's well known that living organisms have repair mechanisms, because radiation damage is continual due to natural radiation. A dose which would kill you if experienced in an hour can be tolerated if absorbed over a longer time.
#19
How about cell phones? Just pocket it near your least favorite organ to be on the safe side.
Posted by: Fi ||
03/20/2011 20:33 Comments ||
Top||
#20
Anon1 you are a dangerous loon. There are known unsafe doses of radiation, and XKCD posted a nice chart describing relative doses today (http://xkcd.com/radiation/), but low doses of radiation have been shown to be beneficial rather than harmful.
This is Ann Coulter, but what she is saying is in fact correct. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FNFF61E_Dg&feature=player_embedded
Asserting that low doses of radiation is known to be harmful is both contrary to our current understanding and inflammatory. A couple days ago I explained why you were wrong and why it is important not to frighten people with your lies.
[Straits Times] INDONESIA said it had evacuated hundreds of people living near Mount Karangetang off northern Sulawesi island as authorities issued a red alert on Saturday following its eruption.
Nearly 600 people live in three villages four kilometres from the volcano's western peak, from which lava continues to spew as it disgorges heat clouds, government volcanologist Kristianto told AFP.
'The process to evacuate 582 villagers has completed. All are now at safety shelters and nobody was injured,' he said from the volcano's monitoring post.
'The volcano is still in the phase of eruption. We detected lava flow which reached as far as 1,800m,' he added.
The 1,784m Karangetan, which forms the northern part of the remote Siau Island in North Sulawesi, killed four people during an eruption in August 2010.
The Indonesian archipelago has dozens of active volcanoes and straddles major tectonic fault lines known as the 'Ring of Fire' between the Pacific and Indian oceans.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
[The Nation (Nairobi)] A 5.9 magnitude earthquake rattled Japan's Ibaraki Prefecture south of the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant on Saturday, the US Geological Survey said, but no tsunami warning was issued.
The quake shook buildings in Tokyo, but no damage was immediately reported, public broadcaster NHK said, adding that flights at the capital's Narita Airport were briefly suspended for safety checks before resuming.
The USGS said the quake struck at 6.56 pm (0956 GMT) and was centred 98 kilometres (61 miles) south of Fukushima and 142 kilometres from Tokyo.
The quake struck at a depth of 24.7 kilometres (15.3 miles).
Japan's meteorological agency measured the quake at a magnitude of 6.1.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
[Al Jazeera] Authorities in Senegal ... a nation of about 14 million on the west coast of Africa bordering Mauretania to the north, Mali to the east, and a pair of Guineas to the south, one of them Bissau. It is 90 percent Mohammedan and has more than 80 political parties. Its primary purpose seems to be absorbing refugees... have placed in durance vile a number of suspects believed to have been plotting a coup d'etat in the West African state.
"The state prosecutor has decided to nip in the bud a plot aimed at a coup d'etat by arresting a number of individuals identified as members of the plot," Justice Minister Cheikh Tidiane Sy said in a statement read out on state television on Saturday.
Tidiane Sy said authorities had learned that "commandos" linked to opposition groups had been planning a number of actions around the capital which would have resulted in deaths.
He said the suspects had targeted areas including the sprawling Sandaga market in downtown Dakar, a stretch of the corniche road which runs around the city centre, and the working class Parcelles-Assainie district further north. He gave no further details.
Saturday's protest
The arrests were announced hours before a protest rally against the government of President Abdoulaye Wade scheduled for Saturday in the capital Dakar and which has been backed by a broad coalition of opposition parties.
The protest marks the 11th anniversary of Wade's presidency and is being held in Dakar's central Independence Square, which organisers are dubbing "Tahrir Place" for the day in homage to the epicentre of Egypt's uprising.
Tidiane Sy confirmed the demonstration would be allowed to be held as planned.
Few expect the protest to gain the momentum being seen across the Middle East, although it is being closely watched for how big a turnout the country's fragmented opposition can draw less than a year before Wade faces re-election in February 2012.
Opposition leaders accuse the octogenarian leader of bending constitutional rules to allow himself to stand for a third term, and suspect him of nurturing plans to engineer the succession of his son Karim Wade as president afterwards -- charges he denies.
The mostly Mohammedan country is rare in the region in that it has a tradition of peaceful transition of power through the ballot box.
Recently donors have raised concerns about levels of official corruption, which Wade has said he is determined to fight.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
[Al Jazeera] Haiti's former president has arrived back home from South Africa, ending seven years in exile.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide ...Haitian politician and former Catholic priest who briefly served as Haiti's first democratically elected president. A proponent of liberation theology, he was appointed to a parish in Port-au-Prince in 1982 after completing his studies. He became a focal point for the pro-democracy movement first under Jean-Claude Baby Doc Duvalier. He won the Haitian general election, 1990-1991 with 67% of the vote and was almost immediately tossed in a September 1991 coup. The coup regime collapsed in 1994 under US pressure after Aristide agreed to roll back several reforms. Aristide was then President again from 1994 to 1996 and from 2001 to 2004. He was dumped again in February 2004, and he accused the US of orchestrating the coup against him. Aristide had a hard time finding a permanent exile despite the large sums of money that had seemingly attached themselves to him, trying first the Central African Republic and then South Africa.... waved aside US concerns that his homecoming might disrupt Haiti's presidential runoff scheduled for Sunday, flying to Port-au-Prince, the capital, in a charter plane with his family.
The plane touched down at Port-au-Prince airport at 9:10am (1410GMT) on Friday.
A small crowd of journalists, dignitaries, airport workers and former members of his security team mobbed Aristide as soon as he descended the steps of the small plane.
He waved and blew a kiss to the crowd, but made no statement before entering a VIP lounge inside the airport terminal. His wife, Mildred, wept.
Hundreds of people gathered outside the airport waving flags and photos of Aristide, known affectionately by many Haitians as "Titide".
Aristide, 57, who says Washington helped engineer his ouster in 2004, insists he will not be involved in politics.
He wants, he says, to lead his foundation's efforts to improve education in the impoverished Caribbean nation devastated by last year's catastrophic earthquake.
Al Jizz's Sebastian Walker, reporting from Port-au-Prince, said the arrival of Aristide is "an incredibly significant development in a very sensitive electoral process".
"Aristide has a huge influence ... and whatever he says about the elections; whether people should turn up and go and vote is going to be significant," he said.
Aristide's ousting
Aristide became Haiti's first freely elected president in 1991, but was tossed after seven months. Re-elected in 2000, his second term saw economic instability and violence which culminated in protests leading to his ouster in 2004.
Before Aristide headed home, Barack B.O. Obama, the US president, called his South African counterpart, Jacob Zuma, to stress the importance of the former president not returning before the poll.
But South Africa said it could not stop Aristide from going back to his country.
"What I should stress is that we are not sending former president Aristide to Haiti," said Collins Chabane, the cabinet minister.
"He was given the passport by the government of Haiti and we can't hold him hostage if he wants to go," Chabane was quoted as telling a news conference.
Sunday's vote pits Mirlande Manigat, a law professor, against entertainer and music star Michel Martelly in a clash of contrasts that has jazzed up the first second-round runoff in the history of Haiti's presidential elections.
Haiti held elections last November but they were marred by fraud and ended with no clear winner. One of the three main contenders, who finished third, said he was rigged out of a second run-off place.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
Progress restoring power to the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has apparently stalled after a full day of work Sunday, although the situation has not deteriorated any further. "Stalled"? The situation has been getting worse since shortly after the tsunami. IMHO if the situation has not deteriorated any further, that is real progress. After stringing a new power line to the plant from the electric grid, company officials reported on Saturday that they had reconnected coolant pumps in reactor Nos. 5 and 6 and restored the flow of water to the spent fuel cooling pools in those buildings. In the day since, temperatures in those pools have returned to near normal. But those two pools had not been considered a significant threat. NONE of the Fukushima pools were at first considered a significant threat. Then some of them suddenly BECAME significant threats. Yomiuri Shimbun:TEPCO also drilled holes in the roofs of the buildings housing the Nos. 5 and 6 reactors to prevent hydrogen explosions.
Photo at the LA Times site of a tank loaded on a flatbed truck, caption: A military tank that will be used to clear rubble from the Fukushima nuclear complex leaves Camp Asaka on a trailer. (Takehiko Kobayashi / Yomiuri Shimbun / March 20, 2011) Took long enough. I imagine a tank is particularly well-suited for that job since it is most likely designed to protect its crew while working in a radioactive environment. Doesn't the US or the SDF have amphibious vessels that could have delivered the tank to Fukushima several days ago? The impression has been forming of TEPCO moving very slowly and retroactively to deal with or prevent problems that were easy to foresee. Getting huge emergency generators to Fukushima Daiichi seems to have been possible & desirable in the first couple of days after the tsunami before the overheating & explosions started, but this wasn't done.
[Arab News] The European Court of Human Rights ruled Friday that crucifixes are acceptable in public school classrooms, and its decision will be binding in 47 countries. The ruling overturned a decision the court had reached in November 2009 in which it said the crucifix could be disturbing to non-Christian or atheist pupils. Led by Italy, several European countries appealed that ruling.
The case originated in Italy, and Friday's final verdict was immediately welcomed in Rome. "The popular sentiment in Europe has won today," said Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini.
All 47 countries that are members of the Council of Europe, the continent's human rights ... which are not the same thing as individual rights, mind you... watchdog, will be required to obey the ruling.
The European Court of Human Rights, which is based in Strasbourg, La Belle France, said Italian public schools did nothing wrong by hanging crucifixes in their classrooms, in a case that divided Europe's traditional Catholic countries and their more secular neighbors.
Friday's final decision by the court's Grand Chamber said it found no evidence "that the display of such a symbol on classroom walls might have an influence on pupils." The case was brought by Soile Lautsi, a Finnish-born mother who said public schools in her Italian town refused to remove the Roman Catholic symbols from classrooms. She said the crucifix violates the secular principles the public schools are supposed to uphold.
Massimo Albertin, Lautsi's husband, said Friday that the family was disappointed and "disillusioned" by the ruling, saying it showed that the court didn't respect the principles on which Italian society is built.
"Freedom of religion, freedom from discrimination, freedom of choice are fundamental principles and in this case they weren't respected," Albertin said by phone from Abano Terme near Padua, where the family lives.
A self-described atheist, Albertin said he didn't think the family had any further recourse, saying the ruling showed "the Vatican is too strong for individuals." The children, who were 11 and 13 at the time the case began, are now 20 and 22 and in university. He said while Lautsi's name was on the court documentation, it was very much a joint initiative.
The original case was heard by a seven-judge panel. The appeal hearing was heard by a "grand chamber" of 19 judges.
The case set up a confrontation between traditional Catholic and Orthodox countries and nations in the north that observe a strict separation between church and state.
Italy and more than a dozen other countries fought the original ruling, contending the crucifix is a symbol of the continent's historic and cultural roots.
The ruling came as Vatican officials announced the Holy See is reaching out to atheists with a series of encounters and debates aimed at fostering intellectual dialogue and introducing nonbelievers to God.
Ahead of the court decision, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, a top Vatican official, said the crucifix was "one of the greatest symbols in the West," like the crescent moon is in the Mohammedan world, and that denying it or canceling it out risked canceling out Western identity.
The crucifix, he said "is a sign of civilization, even if you don't recognize it theologically," said Ravasi, who heads the Vatican's culture office.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/20/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
Almost 32 years after America's worst nuclear crisis at Three Mile Island, people who live in the shadow of the reactor's cooling towers can instantly distinguish among sirens designating three different levels of alert.
Many residents based on a scientific survey stock potassium iodide pills, and the borough of Middletown maintains a "disaster room" lined with evacuation route maps that are updated to reflect every road repair. The local phone book publishes the routes. It also offers a primer on nuclear fission and a map with a 10-mile radius drawn around Three Mile Island, which still generates electricity for 800,000 households along with a certain amount of anxiety.
The crisis here on March 28, 1979, led to "changes throughout the world's nuclear power industry," as a state historical plaque on Route 441 notes.
Over the decades, Three Mile Island has become a touchstone for attitudes toward nuclear power: a symbol of fear for anti-nuclear activists and of the success of emergency safeguards for nuclear supporters.
Comparisons between what happened at Three Mile Island and what is unfolding at the earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant are inevitable. On Friday, Japan's nuclear agency raised the severity of the crisis on the International Nuclear Events Scale from Level 4 to Level 5, the same number the United States used to classify the far less serious accident at Three Mile Island. Making judgements, are we? Let's wait until the dust has settled before we decide which was more serious, shall we?
The Three Mile Island experience also suggests that the cleanup in Japan will be a mammoth undertaking. Luke Barrett, a nuclear consultant, was involved in the crisis response and cleanup effort, which cost $1 billion. "For the first year, no human went into the containment building," Barrett said, because of the high radiation levels.
The NRC gave money to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh to develop robots that could work inside the reactor. Later, the technology was put to work in auto plants and in the cleanup of nuclear waste at Hanford, Wash. The silver lining, so to speak.
Japan contributed $18 million to the effort, and sent 20 nuclear engineers who spent the better part of a decade living around Middletown. Before they all went home in 1989, they donated about a dozen cherry trees as a symbol of friendship. Those trees are expected to bloom right around the March 28th anniversary of the accident.
Today, Middletown has 10,000 residents, about the same as in 1979.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/20/2011 09:12 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Middletown may have as many residents, but they aren't the same people thanks to an exodus of low lifes from Harrisburg.
On top of everything else, some potentially troublesome environmental news out of the Gulf of Mexico again.
The Times Picayune is reporting that the Coast Guard is investigating reports of a brand new deepwater oil spill.
Multiple callers have reported that they have seen a huge sheen of oil not far from a deepwater rig. According to Judson Parker at Examiner.com, the potentially leaky rig is the Matterhorn SeaStar owned by W&T offshore.
BANGKOK -Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva survived a no-confidence motion on Saturday brought by opposition lawmakers seeking to inflict damage ahead of upcoming elections. Abhisit won the vote following a four-day censure debate, in which the opposition Puea Thai party accused his administration of corruption, policy failures and human rights violations charges the government denies.
The victory the third such censure motion that Abhisit has faced down since 2009 means the current ruling coalition can remain in office in the lead up to a fierce poll battle expected in late June or early July.
Abhisit, who won 249 votes to 184 against him with 11 abstentions, was one of ten ministers named in the censure motion, all of whom narrowly survived separate votes by garnering the necessary minimum of 238 ballots.
The opposition lawmakers were seen as having little chance of winning the no-confidence vote because they lack a majority in the lower house, dominated by a six-party coalition led by Abhisits establishment Democratic Party.
This is not about good governance or accountability, this is about how to survive a vote that will have a significant impact on the upcoming election, said author and former Thai diplomat Pavin Chachavalpongpun.
During the debate, the opposition accused Abhisit of abusing his power during deadly military operations in April and May 2010 aimed at clearing Red Shirt protesters from the streets of the capital. More than 90 people died in clashes between the army and Red Shirt demonstrators last year the kingdoms worst political violence in decades.
The mainly rural, working class Reds are broadly loyal to fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a military coup in 2006 and lives overseas to avoid a jail sentence for corruption imposed in his absence. They view Abhisits rule as undemocratic which the government denies because he came to power in a 2008 parliamentary vote with the backing of the military after a court ruling threw out the previous administration.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/20/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
Nearly half the city workers in Costa Mesa received layoff notices last week. Street sweepers. Firefighters. Mechanics. Payroll clerks. Animal control workers. In all, about 210 of the city's 472 employees, many of whom have worked there for decades. On Thursday, as the notices were being handed out, one maintenance worker committed suicide by jumping from the city hall roof. Did his suicide note blame the City, or his ex-wife?
The cutbacks are necessary because the escalating costs of providing pensions for unionized employees are draining the city's revenue, city leaders say. Within three years, city projections show, more than one of every five tax dollars will be spent on employees' retirement benefits. Sounds like a drain, to me!
Republican efforts to roll back public employee benefits and bargaining rights has triggered mass protests in places such as Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio. But in Costa Mesa, where conservatives dominate city politics, the offensive against public worker compensation has gone further. WaPo. Do they seem to take sides? Clearly, the mayor should work for free, and the taxpayers just pay up, and quit whining. Balance the budget, Trunks, but don't cut anything!
Between 1998 and 2008, the last year for which figures are available, total pension payments by state and local governments rose twice as fast as their payrolls, according to census figures.
Already, some politicians ideologically opposed to public employee unions and don't think the rest of us should pay for the excesses have attributed the problems to their greed and political influence. Now members of those unions are on the defensive.
"What angers a lot of us is that we're being blamed for the economic situation," said Jason Pyle, 38, a fire department captain who earned $160,000 in base, overtime and certification pay in 2010, according to city records. It's California, so that's about the same as $40,000 in Iowa. Isn't it?
Pyle, who has been with the department for 14 years, could retire at age 54 with 90 percent of his pay. Not defending that - it's his right, you know - Jason reduces the argument to the absurd:
"They're marginalizing what we actually do -- like everything I've done in my life now has no meaning." That's right, Jason. You're useless; a waste of skin.
He called the city's approach to the problem -- the layoff notices -- "a scorched-earth policy." Yep. I'd like to see more of it. When the unions give something back, they can save the jobs of their fellows without breaking the backs of the taxpayers. Tough to be a pawn in this game.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/20/2011 08:51 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
"What angers a lot of us is that we're being blamed for the economic situation,"
Why does that whine sound like bankers and investment brokers and pols who say that while the gravy was rolling in no one complained, but when their house(s) of paper collapsed everyone blames them for the Great Recession. Who set up the unsustainable house of cards? It doesn't matter whether its a killing in the market or putting the fix in with pols for a killing on tax revenue, it's the same.
#2
"What angers a lot of us is that we're being blamed for the economic situation,"
They aren't to blame for the economic situation. It's just that, because of the economic situation, they are no longer affordable. Decisions must be made: either cut costs per person, or cut the number of people. Most of the private sector has done both.
#3
This sounds like a job for technology: rather than the usual magic unicorns that poop rainbows, we could gene-splice new ones that poop public employee union benefits.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Straits Times] INDONESIA said it had evacuated hundreds of people living near Mount Karangetang off northern Sulawesi island as authorities issued a red alert on Saturday following its eruption.
[Al Jazeera] Authorities in 
Almost 32 years after America's worst nuclear crisis at Three Mile Island, people who live in the shadow of the reactor's cooling towers can instantly distinguish among sirens designating three different levels of alert.
