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18.6.09
16.6.09
Join a Delegation
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Detainee being shackled by guard © Steven Rubin
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» Download your Resource Package
Demand Immigration Detention Reform!
Congressional In-District Lobby Weeks, June 29th – July 5th
Detainee being shackled by guard © Steven Rubin
We need your help. Tens of thousands of individuals will be detained tonight, tomorrow, and the next day at an average cost of $95 per person, per day. Among them are survivors of torture and human trafficking, undocumented immigrants, asylum seekers, lawful permanent residents, and even U.S. citizens. The individuals are caught in a U.S. immigration detention system that is expensive, ineffective, and that denies basic human rights.
You can help fix it. Effective alternatives cost as little as $12 per day, and some commonsense measures will save money and help stop abuses against the more than 300,000 men, women and children detained each year.
A few members of Congress have stepped forward to lead the reform. With your help, leading a visit to your Representative or Senators, we'll press Congress to end human rights abuses in detention facilities in the US.
Amnesty International will provide you with the support and training you need to be an effective Delegation Leader. Serving as a delegation leader will take a time commitment of about 15 hours, which includes reading background materials, participating in our online training, meeting with members of your delegation and meeting with your elected officials' office some time during the workday between June 29th – July 5th.
» Sign up to lead a delegation» Find a delegation to join
» Download your Resource Package
13.5.09
Recession Drains Social Security and Medicare
WASHINGTON — Even as Congress hunted for ways to finance a major expansion of health insurance coverage, the Obama administration reported Tuesday that the financial condition of the two largest federal benefit programs, Medicare and Social Security, had deteriorated, in part because of the recession.
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As a result, the administration said, the Medicare fund that pays hospital bills for older Americans is expected to run out of money in 2017, two years sooner than projected last year. The Social Security trust fund will be exhausted in 2037, four years earlier than predicted, it said.
Spending on Social Security and Medicare totaled more than $1 trillion last year, accounting for more than one-third of the federal budget.
The fragility of the two programs is a concern not just for current beneficiaries, but also for future retirees, taxpayers and politicians. Lawmakers say they would never allow Medicare’s trust fund to run out of money. But beneficiaries could be required to pay higher premiums, co-payments and deductibles to help cover the costs.
The projected date of insolvency, a widely used measure of the benefit programs’ financial health, shows the immense difficulties Mr. Obama and Congress will face in trying to shore them up while also extending health coverage to millions of Americans.
The labor secretary, Hilda L. Solis, noted that 5.7 million jobs had been lost since the recession began in December 2007. With fewer people working, the government collects less in payroll taxes, a major source of financing for Medicare and Social Security.
A resumption of economic growth is not expected to close the financing gap. The trustees’ bleak projections already assume that the economy will begin to recover late this year.
The Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, said the only way to keep Medicare solvent was to “control runaway growth in both public and private health care expenditures.” And he said Mr. Obama intended to do that as part of his plan to guarantee access to health insurance for all Americans.
But if cost controls do not produce the expected savings, Congress is likely to find it difficult to preserve benefits without increasing taxes.
Just hours before the trustees of Medicare and Social Security issued their annual report, suggesting that the nation could not afford the programs it had, the Senate Finance Committee finished a hearing on how to pay for the expansion of health insurance coverage that Mr. Obama seeks.
Mr. Obama has said he does not want to finance expanded health coverage with more deficit spending. Rather, he says, Congress must find ways to offset the costs, so they do not add to the deficit over the next decade.
Federal deficits and debt are soaring because of the recession and federal efforts to shore up banks and other industries while trying to revive the economy with a huge infusion of federal spending.
“The financial outlook for the hospital insurance trust fund is significantly less favorable than projected in last year’s annual report,” the Medicare trustees said. “Actual payroll tax income in 2008 and projected future amounts are significantly lower than previously projected, due to lower levels of average wages and fewer covered workers.”
In coming years, the trustees said, Medicare spending will increase faster than either workers’ earnings or the economy over all.
The trustees predicted that, for the first time in more than three decades, Social Security recipients would not receive any increase in their benefits next year or in 2011. In 2012, they predicted, the cost-of-living adjustment will be 1.4 percent.
The updates are calculated under a statutory formula and reflect changes in the Consumer Price Index, which was unusually high last year because of energy prices.
If there is no cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security, about three-fourths of Medicare beneficiaries will not see any change in their basic premiums for Part B, which covers doctors’ services. The monthly premium, now $96.40, is usually deducted from Social Security checks, the main source of income for more than half of older Americans.
The trustees said that one-fourth of Medicare beneficiaries would face sharply higher premiums: about $104 next year and $120 in 2011. This group includes new Medicare beneficiaries and those with higher incomes (over about $85,000 a year for individuals and $170,000 for couples).
Seventy-five percent of beneficiaries will not pay any increase, so the remaining 25 percent have to pay more to keep the trust fund at the same level, Medicare officials said.
The aging of baby boomers will strain both Medicare and Social Security, but Medicare’s financial problems are more urgent.
The trustees predict a 30 percent increase in the number of Medicare beneficiaries in the coming decade, to 58.8 million in 2018, from 45.2 million last year.
But the projected increase in health costs and the use of medical care is a more significant factor in the growth of Medicare. The trustees predict that average Medicare spending per beneficiary will increase more than 50 percent, to $17,000 in 2018, from $11,000 last year.
Representative Pete Stark, the California Democrat who is chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, said the Medicare report “underscores the urgent need for health reform.”
19.4.09
Truly Amazing!!!
Scottish Singer's Audition Video Sets Online Record
Susan Boyle's Performance Viewed Over 66 Million Times In One Week
By Jose Antonio Vargas
Washington Post Staff WriterSunday, April 19, 2009; 7:29 AM
Susan Boyle is headed for the history books.
The online video of Boyle's performance in the reality show "Britain's Got Talent" has set the record for the number of views in a week -- and shows no sign of stopping.
According to Visible Measures, which tracks videos from YouTube, MySpace and other video-sharing sites, Boyle's audition has generated 66.3 million views. On YouTube alone, it's been viewed more than 30 million times. The 7-minute video that was posted on YouTube last Saturday and then widely circulated online easily eclipsed more high-profile videos that have been around for months. Tina Fey's impersonation of Sarah Palin has clocked in 34.2 million views, said the folks at Visible Measures, while President Obama's victory speech on election night has generated 18.5 million views. In less than a week, Boyle topped them.
But it's not just online video where Boyle, the unassuming woman from a tiny Scottish town, has dominated. Over the weekend, her Facebook fan page was flooded with comments, at some points adding hundreds of new members within a minute. The page listed 150,000 members on 1 p.m. Friday. It grew to 850,000 by 6 a.m. Sunday. Her Wikipedia entry has attracted nearly half a million page views since it was created last Sunday.
Indeed, the Internet is her stage, and the 47-year-old who has said she's never heard of YouTube is the Web's hottest entertainer. "She's really the world's singer right now," said Julie Supan, a YouTube spokesperson who in her four years at the company cannot remember a video raking in this many views in such a period of time.
One view at a time, Boyle's audience is proving that the social Web -- where users aren't just mere viewers but also distributers -- makes the digital world feel smaller and more connected. And her global popularity is a testament that the marriage between old media (her performance first aired on Britisn television) and new media (it then made its way to YouTube, Twitter and Facebook) is broadening the reach of all media, from one channel to the next, one person at a time.
As a result, at any given moment, someone is passing along Boyle online.
14.4.09
You are Being Lied to About Pirates -- Signs of the Times News
You are Being Lied to About Pirates -- Signs of the Times News:
Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the U.S. to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth.
But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as "one of the great menaces of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell - and some justice on their side.
Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the "golden age of piracy" - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: Pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't?
In his book "Villains of All Nations," the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the cat o' nine tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.
Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the 18th century."
They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed "quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy." This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.
The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: "What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live."
In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its 9 million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.
Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.
Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the U.N. envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no cleanup, no compensation and no prevention."
At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300 million worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia's unprotected seas.
The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."
This is the context in which the men we are calling "pirates" have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a "tax" on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coast Guard of Somalia - and it's not hard to see why.
In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was "to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters ... We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas." William Scott would understand those words.
No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters - especially those who have held up World Food Program supplies. But the "pirates" have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defense of the country's territorial waters."
During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America's founding fathers paid pirates to protect America's territorial waters, because they had no navy or coast guard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?
Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn't act on those crimes - but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit corridor for 20 percent of the world's oil supply, we begin to shriek about "evil." If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause - our crimes - before we send in the gunboats to root out Somalia's criminals.
The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarized by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know "what he meant by keeping possession of the sea." The pirate smiled and responded: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor."
Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today - but who is the robber?
Postscript: Some commentators seem bemused by the fact that both toxic dumping and the theft of fish are happening in the same place - wouldn't this make the fish contaminated? In fact, Somalia's coastline is vast, stretching 3,300km (over 2,000 miles). Imagine how easy it would be - without any coast guard or army - to steal fish from Florida and dump nuclear waste on California, and you get the idea. These events are happening in different places but with the same horrible effect: death for the locals and stirred-up piracy. There's no contradiction.
Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the U.S. to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth.
But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as "one of the great menaces of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell - and some justice on their side.
Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the "golden age of piracy" - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: Pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't?
In his book "Villains of All Nations," the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the cat o' nine tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.
Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the 18th century."
They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed "quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy." This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.
The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: "What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live."
In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its 9 million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.
Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.
Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the U.N. envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no cleanup, no compensation and no prevention."
At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300 million worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia's unprotected seas.
The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."
This is the context in which the men we are calling "pirates" have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a "tax" on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coast Guard of Somalia - and it's not hard to see why.
In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was "to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters ... We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas." William Scott would understand those words.
No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters - especially those who have held up World Food Program supplies. But the "pirates" have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defense of the country's territorial waters."
During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America's founding fathers paid pirates to protect America's territorial waters, because they had no navy or coast guard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?
Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn't act on those crimes - but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit corridor for 20 percent of the world's oil supply, we begin to shriek about "evil." If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause - our crimes - before we send in the gunboats to root out Somalia's criminals.
The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarized by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know "what he meant by keeping possession of the sea." The pirate smiled and responded: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor."
Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today - but who is the robber?
Postscript: Some commentators seem bemused by the fact that both toxic dumping and the theft of fish are happening in the same place - wouldn't this make the fish contaminated? In fact, Somalia's coastline is vast, stretching 3,300km (over 2,000 miles). Imagine how easy it would be - without any coast guard or army - to steal fish from Florida and dump nuclear waste on California, and you get the idea. These events are happening in different places but with the same horrible effect: death for the locals and stirred-up piracy. There's no contradiction.
12.4.09
Yay! Its time to Think smart about dangers- This is not one of them!
In Calif., Medical Marijuana Laws Are Moving Pot Into the Mainstream
Entrepreneur Richard Lee founded Oaksterdam University in Oakland, Calif. It offers training for workers in "the cannabis industry." (Vance Jacobs - For The Washington Post)
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 12, 2009; Page A03
LOS ANGELES -- With little notice and even less controversy, marijuana is now available as a medical treatment in California to almost anyone who tells a willing physician he would feel better if he smoked.
Pot is now retailed over the counter in hundreds of storefronts across Los Angeles and is credited with reviving a section of downtown Oakland, where an entrepreneur sells out classes offering "quality training for the cannabis industry." The tabloid LA Journal of Education for Medical Marijuana is fat with ads for Magic Purple, Strawberry Cough and other offerings in more than 400 "dispensaries" operating in the city.
Los Angeles officials say applications for retail outlets surged after Feb. 26, when U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced that the Drug Enforcement Administration will no longer raid such stores. Those pressing for change in drug laws regard the announcement as a watershed in a 40-year battle against marijuana's official listing as a dangerous drug -- a legal fight that, in California, is being waged on ground that has shifted dramatically toward acceptance.
All told, 13 states have legalized medical marijuana, a trend advocates credit in part to growing openness to alternative healing. As a "Schedule 1" drug under the 1970 federal narcotics act, marijuana officially has "no currently accepted medical use." But doctors have found it effective in reducing nausea, easing glaucoma, and improving appetite and sleep in AIDS patients.
Marijuana use is widespread -- government surveys show that 100 million Americans have smoked pot or its resin, hashish, in their lifetimes, and 25 million have done so in the past year. Yet polls show that the public is still wary of legalization. As President Obama recently said when asked about legalizing marijuana, "I don't think that's a good strategy to grow our economy."
But in California, pot is such a booming growth industry that lawmakers are being asked to consider its potential as a salve to the state's financial woes. Betty Yee, chairman of the California State Board of Equalization, endorsed a bill in February to regulate the estimated $14 billion marijuana market, citing the state's budget problems. California currently collects $18 million in sales taxes from marijuana dispensaries, and Yee said a regulated pot trade would bring in $1.3 billion.
"I think the tide is starting to turn in terms of marijuana being part of the mainstream," she said. "The pieces seem to be falling into place."
In Los Angeles, Councilman Dennis Zine warned that half the city's sales outlets might be forced to close, but only to control the growth of what the city now regards as an accepted business. "We're not getting complaints about people smoking marijuana," said the retired motorcycle policeman. "We're seeing complaints about the proliferation of facilities. They opened up right down the street from my district office, in the same complex as a liquor store. Got the big green leaf in front."
The new reality can be disorienting. In Mendocino County, the heart of Northern California's "Emerald Triangle," marijuana farming has been openly tolerated since the arrival of counterculture refugees in the late 1960s. But elected officials say they are being forced to crack down on growers who offended neighbors with aggressive farming after medical marijuana laws hastened pot's shift from the black market to a gray zone.
"Prop. 215 opened up a new world for people who had been underground," said Scott Zeramby, referencing the 1996 ballot proposition that legalized pot for medical users. By 2007, Zeramby's garden supply business in the town of Fort Bragg was doing $2.5 million in business amid a land rush by new growers eager to cash in.
"Things were getting a little crazy, even out of hand," Zeramby said. "What happened? A critical mass."
At the other end of the supply chain, some 200 dispensaries have opened using a legal loophole in an L.A. moratorium on such outlets, some making only the thinnest pretense of operating as "caregivers," the legal justification for providing cannabis directly.
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8.4.09
CARE President Obama's Call for Increased Focus on Food Security
CARE Applauds President Obama's Call for Increased Focus on Food Security:
"CARE Applauds President Obama's Call for Increased Focus on Food Security
Humanitarian agency urges public support for fight to end global poverty
WASHINGTON, D.C. (April 2, 2009) - The international poverty-fighting organization CARE applauds President Barack Obama's focus on alleviating chronic hunger and lifting global communities out of poverty. At the G20 summit, the president called for doubling assistance for food security and increasing foreign assistance projects to alleviate chronic hunger that affects nearly one billion people worldwide.
'We know that the cycle of poverty will never be broken unless people are given the tools to end chronic hunger and become self-sufficient so they can provide adequate food for themselves, their families, and their communities. The fact that the president and concerned leaders on Capitol Hill understand this gives us hope for ending the crippling hunger that keeps so many people mired in dire poverty,' said Dr. Helene Gayle, president and CEO of CARE.
A few years ago when CARE took the bold step of pulling back from the historical practice of selling U.S. food on the open market in poor countries to fund development projects, the questions poured in. Why would any humanitarian agency essentially turn away money for its programs? There is a plain answer to that complex question. Simply put, CARE believes that humanitarian aid should serve the long-term purpose of ending poverty. U.S. food aid policy fell far short. It needed to be changed.
The president has made it clear that food security, a key priority for his administration, means setting policies and programs that contribute to safety and prosperity for developing nations as well as ours. When we address the underlying causes of food insecurity and malnutrition, we are well on the way to tackling the root causes of extreme poverty.
We encourage Americans to support the president's request for increased foreign assistance. We also call on fellow citizens to support provisions of the Global Food Security Act of 2009, authored by U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar and Sen. Robert Casey (D-PA) and approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 31.
The legislation authorizes additional funding for agricultural assistance. It also calls for a comprehensive strategy that takes a whole of government approach to address global food insecurity.
CARE played an integral role in drafting the 'Roadmap to End Global Hunger' a collective effort by the NGO community which lays out a vision for U.S. leadership to end global hunger. Both the Food Security Act and the president's call today address key concerns raised in the Roadmap.
"CARE Applauds President Obama's Call for Increased Focus on Food Security
Humanitarian agency urges public support for fight to end global poverty
WASHINGTON, D.C. (April 2, 2009) - The international poverty-fighting organization CARE applauds President Barack Obama's focus on alleviating chronic hunger and lifting global communities out of poverty. At the G20 summit, the president called for doubling assistance for food security and increasing foreign assistance projects to alleviate chronic hunger that affects nearly one billion people worldwide.
'We know that the cycle of poverty will never be broken unless people are given the tools to end chronic hunger and become self-sufficient so they can provide adequate food for themselves, their families, and their communities. The fact that the president and concerned leaders on Capitol Hill understand this gives us hope for ending the crippling hunger that keeps so many people mired in dire poverty,' said Dr. Helene Gayle, president and CEO of CARE.
A few years ago when CARE took the bold step of pulling back from the historical practice of selling U.S. food on the open market in poor countries to fund development projects, the questions poured in. Why would any humanitarian agency essentially turn away money for its programs? There is a plain answer to that complex question. Simply put, CARE believes that humanitarian aid should serve the long-term purpose of ending poverty. U.S. food aid policy fell far short. It needed to be changed.
The president has made it clear that food security, a key priority for his administration, means setting policies and programs that contribute to safety and prosperity for developing nations as well as ours. When we address the underlying causes of food insecurity and malnutrition, we are well on the way to tackling the root causes of extreme poverty.
We encourage Americans to support the president's request for increased foreign assistance. We also call on fellow citizens to support provisions of the Global Food Security Act of 2009, authored by U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar and Sen. Robert Casey (D-PA) and approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 31.
The legislation authorizes additional funding for agricultural assistance. It also calls for a comprehensive strategy that takes a whole of government approach to address global food insecurity.
CARE played an integral role in drafting the 'Roadmap to End Global Hunger' a collective effort by the NGO community which lays out a vision for U.S. leadership to end global hunger. Both the Food Security Act and the president's call today address key concerns raised in the Roadmap.
29.3.09
The Politics of Being Illogical
oin this cause 
5 comments
As I argued in a previous article, it makes no sense whatsoever to continue to criminalize and wage a costly battle against the cannabis drug. In an online forum with the public, where President Obama answered unfiltered questions sent in by millions, he would've been remiss to ignore the popularity of the one topic that kept popping up in different areas of discussion: the legalization of marijuana.
(It is inconclusive whether the popularity of the marijuana-related questions were the result of a voting campaign by particular interest groups, or in fact, the public at large is finding the issue of legalization much easier to digest given the condition of our economy.)
To his credit, President Obama did ultimately address the issue of whether marijuana should be legalized, albeit with a statement the U.S. Supreme Court would be proud of. Although the President did not explicitly state his opposition to the decriminalization of marijuana, he instead relayed his belief that it was not a "good strategy for our economy".
I can fully understand that Mr. Obama's primary concern, as it should be, is to lead our nation out of this deep financial crisis and use all the influence and negotiating acumen he possesses to create and pass the legislation that is probably necessary to keep our economy from falling much further.
It might appear to some, at least given the words from most of their members, that the Republican Party might be somewhat hesitant to give their full approval to all that President Obama seeks from Congress. Given the stress and opposition already in place, had he come right out and announced his support for the legalization of marijuana, his efforts to work with Congress for all of these economic and mortgage packages would've been made that much harder.
That's not to say the savings and revenue realized from such decriminalization and resulting taxation would've been fictional or insignificant in any way. Just the opposite.
But in the world of politics and Washington, D.C., negotiations and conflict are a daily occurrence, and the microscope is so trained on the opposition, by both parties, that everything said or done can be used positively or negatively. Elections for 435 members of Congress are every two years, which essentially means they are constantly running for office. Good or bad, polls in their district will largely dictate what they say and do as Representatives. Even national polls may influence the talking points of national candidates.
For instance, it is definitively Unconstitutional to prohibit same-sex marriages, yet most politicians, including President Obama, have failed to support such a right, maybe because most polls show a lack of support nationally. Add in the factor of an opponent whose most vocal supporters would be energized by such an issue, and it instantly becomes a topic to largely avoid, regardless of how wrong it is.
This could be tied to the backlash against several Republican legislators in California I noted in another previous article. They decided, on their own, to act in a way they thought was best. Yet, because of their party, and a few vocal constituents, they could face political retribution.
This is politics. Speaking with vagueness; acting with polling support; rarely saying and doing the right thing before everyone else believes it to be the right thing as well.
17.3.09
GlobalSecurity.org - SITREP Situation Report
GlobalSecurity.org - SITREP Situation Report: "Are the US and Russia Playing Nuclear Games
Posted by James Jay Carafano on 03/16/2009 :: Permalink :: Comments
US-Russian disagreements over the proposed deployment of land-based missile defenses in Poland and Czech Republic have renewed the debate over the impact of defenses on arms control. In an article posted on the Centre for Research on Globalization web site, former US intelligence and arms control official Scott Ritter asserted, 'If the members of the Obama administration would bother to take a stroll down memory lane, they might recall that once upon a time there was a document called the anti-ballistic missile treaty, signed in 1972 between the United States and the former Soviet Union, which recognized that anti-missile defense shields were inherently destabilizing, and as such should not be deployed.' Ritter's statement bears closer scrutiny.
During the Cold War the Soviets deployed the world's only active ballistic missile defense system. Today, Moscow is still protected by a Missile Defense System. This system never played a relevant role in destabilizing competition between the super powers. Additionally, although the issue remains hotly debated, some scholars (see, for example, William Odom, The Collapse of the Soviet Military) contend that the proposal to develop the Strategic Defense Initiative by US President Ronald Reagan accelerated arms control agreements with the Soviet Union.
Research at The Heritage Foundation employing game theory also suggests that missile defense, rather than being destabilizing, actually contributes to limiting the likelihood of nuclear confrontation. Heritage analyst Baker Spring developed a game theory application that studied the affects of missile defense on nuclear competition in a 'proliferated' environment where several countries (with independent foreign policies) had access to ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. According to Spring the outcome of his research suggests that 'the presence of defenses in a multi-player setting not only does not feed instability, but also may contribute to stability.'
First, the outcome of the games generally showed that the more widespread the presence of defenses, the lower was the propensity to ready offensive (nuclear) arms and fire shots with these arms. It also showed a greater propensity to aban¬don offensive arms (disarm) as defenses became more widespread.
Second, the more widespread the presence of defenses, the lower the propensity to adopt hos¬tile attitudes toward one another or move to threaten each other.
Third, the more widespread the defenses, the less likely an aggressive actor's conclusions favored aggressive actions.
For full results of the nuclear games, see Nuclear Stability Working Group, Nuclear Games: An Exercise Examining Stability and Defenses in a Proliferated World (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, 2005), at www.heritage.org/upload/NuclearGames.pdf.
Tags:
* Carafano
* foreign policy issues
* Nuclear weapons
* Russia and the United States
* The Heritage Foundation"
Posted by James Jay Carafano on 03/16/2009 :: Permalink :: Comments
US-Russian disagreements over the proposed deployment of land-based missile defenses in Poland and Czech Republic have renewed the debate over the impact of defenses on arms control. In an article posted on the Centre for Research on Globalization web site, former US intelligence and arms control official Scott Ritter asserted, 'If the members of the Obama administration would bother to take a stroll down memory lane, they might recall that once upon a time there was a document called the anti-ballistic missile treaty, signed in 1972 between the United States and the former Soviet Union, which recognized that anti-missile defense shields were inherently destabilizing, and as such should not be deployed.' Ritter's statement bears closer scrutiny.
During the Cold War the Soviets deployed the world's only active ballistic missile defense system. Today, Moscow is still protected by a Missile Defense System. This system never played a relevant role in destabilizing competition between the super powers. Additionally, although the issue remains hotly debated, some scholars (see, for example, William Odom, The Collapse of the Soviet Military) contend that the proposal to develop the Strategic Defense Initiative by US President Ronald Reagan accelerated arms control agreements with the Soviet Union.
Research at The Heritage Foundation employing game theory also suggests that missile defense, rather than being destabilizing, actually contributes to limiting the likelihood of nuclear confrontation. Heritage analyst Baker Spring developed a game theory application that studied the affects of missile defense on nuclear competition in a 'proliferated' environment where several countries (with independent foreign policies) had access to ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. According to Spring the outcome of his research suggests that 'the presence of defenses in a multi-player setting not only does not feed instability, but also may contribute to stability.'
First, the outcome of the games generally showed that the more widespread the presence of defenses, the lower was the propensity to ready offensive (nuclear) arms and fire shots with these arms. It also showed a greater propensity to aban¬don offensive arms (disarm) as defenses became more widespread.
Second, the more widespread the presence of defenses, the lower the propensity to adopt hos¬tile attitudes toward one another or move to threaten each other.
Third, the more widespread the defenses, the less likely an aggressive actor's conclusions favored aggressive actions.
For full results of the nuclear games, see Nuclear Stability Working Group, Nuclear Games: An Exercise Examining Stability and Defenses in a Proliferated World (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, 2005), at www.heritage.org/upload/NuclearGames.pdf.
Tags:
* Carafano
* foreign policy issues
* Nuclear weapons
* Russia and the United States
* The Heritage Foundation"
2.2.09
Facebook Plans to Make Money by Selling Your Data
Written by Lidija Davis / February 1, 2009 9:51 PM / 30 Comments
Starting this spring, companies will be able to selectively target Facebook's members in order to research the appeal of new products through a polling system called Engagement Ads as demonstrated at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
The Evolution of Engagement Ads
Engagement Ads are not new to Facebook. Last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook had begun "quietly testing" the product in August and was hoping to roll it out by the end of November.
Engagement Ads, said the WSJ, would appear on the home page of Facebook when you first log on and prompt you to interact with an ad. If you did interact with the ad, Facebook would then attempt to share your action with your friends thus "getting the ad in front of more eyeballs."
At the time, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said that ads systems are "built over time through continual tweaking." She added that Facebook's existing ad offerings were doing well but "undersell Facebook's broader opportunity."
If the Telegraph report is correct, Engagement Ads have had a massive tweak; companies will be able to pose questions to and receive feedback from selected members in real time based on user information that Facebook provides.
Randi Zuckerberg, Facebook's Global Markets Director told the Telegraph that companies are excited about this new polling system. "It takes a very long time to do a focus group, and businesses often don't have the luxury of time. I think they liked the instant responses," she said.
Facebook's Advertising Attempts
Facebook's foray into advertising over time has been weak at best. Forrester's Jeremiah Owyang has called Facebook's marketing toolset 'confusing', adding that brands will only succeed with engagement advertising if they lean on user behaviors like communication, self-expression, and social exploration.
When Facebook launched it's much hyped advertising strategy in 2007, we had hoped it would not be met with backlash. Unfortunately this wasn't to be the case and the Beacon saga came to an end the following month with Mark Zuckerberg apologizing for the way Facebook had dealt with the situation.
It appears Facebook has run the gamut when it comes to advertising efforts. What began with fliers, display banner ads and even the very similar Facebook Polls have not yet inspired marketers to run in droves to the popular social networking site.
But could this be the year things turn around for them? Maybe. Change certainly is in the air at Facebook. Zuckerberg had noticeably dressed up for Davos, telling blogger Robert Scoble it was to denote that this was Facebook's 'intense' year. The Facebook founder bio page has had a recent addition. And as for Engagement Ads? Well, we'll just have to wait and see. What do you think?
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