TREATING AIDS IS NOT A CRIME : Free Doctors Kamiar & Arash Alaei

Masyarakat Internasional mendesak pemerintah Iran untuk segera
membebaskan dua dokter lokal Arash Alaei dan Kamiar Alaei, yang sudah
ditahan di Penjara Evin, Tehran, sejak Juni 2008. Aktivis HAM Peter
Witzler, seperti dikutip dalam situs Physicians for Human Rights
(PHR), mengatakan, pemerintah Iran telah berbuat semena-mena dengan
memenjarakan kedua dokter sama sekali tidak bersalah itu. "Membantu
pengobatan pengidap AIDS itu bukan tindakan kriminal, itu adalah tugas
mulia," katanya. PHR telah
mengirimkan surat kepada pemimpin Iran dan mendesaknya untuk
membebaskan doter bersaudara itu tanpa syarat. PHR mengharapkan
masyarakat internasional mendukung kampanye pembebasan Alaei
bersaudara. Caranya, dengan mengirimkan surat memrotes pemenjaraan
Alei bersaudara, kepada Kedutaan Besar Iran di masing-masing negara.
Selain itu, kata Peter, masyarakat juga dapat ikut serta dengan
menandatangani petisi online pembebasan kedua dokter Iran tersebut,
Petisi dan contoh surat dapat diakses melalui situs
http://iranfreethedocs.org/author/pwitzler/.

Rezim otoriter Iran menuduh Kamiar and Arash Alaei telah menjadi
mata-mata pihak asing karena berbagi informasi dan keahlian dengan
para pakar HIV/Aids internasional. Bahkan, koneksi kedua dokter
tersebut dengan Harvard School of Public Health dijadikan salah satu
alasan memasukkan mereka ke sel 209, Penjara Evin, yang dikenal kasar
dan tidak beradab dalam memperlakukan tahanan. Seperti dikutip
iranfreethedocs.org, upaya mengeluarkan Alaei bersaudara akan menjadi
salah satu pokok bahasan dalam Konferensi Internasional mengenai
HIV/Aids di Meksiko pada Agustus 2009 mendatang. Pada 2006 kedua
dokter tersebut dikenal sebagai pengagas awal yang mengaplikasikan
strategi harm reduction dalam menanggulangi epidemi HIV/Aids di Iran.
Bahkan Alei bersaudara berhasil meyakinkan pemerintah di negara
mullah tersebut untuk mengadopsi strategi harm reduction, sebagai
bagian dari kebijakan nasional Iran dalam memerangi penyebaran
HIV/Aids. Kerja keras kedua dokter tersebut tidak sia-sia. Iran
menjadi rujukan internasional dalam menekan penyebaran HIV/Aids
melalui program penyediaan jarum suntik steril dan kondom bagi
kalangan berisiko, seperti pengguna narkoba suntik dan pekerja seks
(A-133).

From me :
So, what can you do? Nothing much, maybe.. but for sure, doing the
simple thing below, you can make a change. You can join to defend the
cause, please use this link to sign in your petition online:
http://iranfreethedocs.org/petition/

Kabul Beauty School

Kabul beauty school dropout | Mail Online

An American housewife who wrote a bestseller after convincing Afghan women to ditch the burka - and get a Brazilian - flees Kabul with son in terror of her warlord husband.

The hairdresser who wrote a bestselling book about opening a beauty salon in conflict-torn Afghanistan has fled to America - fearing for both her and her son's lives.

Debbie Rodriguez claims that her husband - an assistant to a Kabul warlord - planned to kidnap her son and hold him for ransom.

Leave

Leave home. Leave familiar. Leave the course you’re on because you never wanted to be there in the first place. Leave him. Leave her. Leave, because they don’t appreciate your love, now do they, really? Leave working for someone else’s dream. Leave the shitty scene. Leave your comfortable couch. Leave convention, respectability, responsibility, obligation. Leave the guilt, sorrow, abuse, violence, rape. Leave it in the past, because fuck them for attempting to ruin your future. Leave apprehension. Leave intimidation. Leave what’s right, because who are they to tell you anyway? Leave Glasgow. Leave New York. Leave Miami. Leave Chicago. And definitely leave L.A. Because there is an adventure. A plane. A bus. A train. School application, job application away. Leave soul-killing jobs. Leave negative people. Leave dead relationships. You are wasting your time. Your life. Your talent. Your love. Your opportunity. And with each passing day, you slowly lose your shine. Your glow. Your spark. Your fight. And your heart. You talk about it all the time. Just fucking leave. And find yourself.” — Christopher Gutierrez

SBY-Boediono, Megabowo, JK-Win

Poll: SBY-Boediono, Megabowo, JK-Win

Chris Komari Says:


THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS, when it comes to SBY presidency and his 5 years accomplishments.

1. For the last 5 years, he has never balanced his budget (APBN), not even a single year.

2. For the last 5 years, Indonesia’s debts are getting bigger, where domestic debts are catching up and now bigger than foreign debts. Prior to 1997, Indonesia domestic debts are virtually Zero or, very small.

3. SBY claims to have paying off debts $7.6 billion with IMF, which is true. But in doing so, he created over $17 billion new domestic debts in BONDS or, known as SUN (Surat Utang Negara). He was not robbing Paul to Peter; he was like robbing ACHONG-ACHONG in Indonesia to pay Peter. He robbed much bigger in value about 2.5 times than the amount he paid off.

4. During the last 5 years, there is an average of Rp. 255 trillion Rupiah surplus in export every year. If we multiply that in 5 years, Indonesia shall have at least Rp. 1,275 trillion Rupiah reserved-funds or, Bank Devisa Negara. Recently, BI (Bank Indonesia) stated that Indonesia had only Rp. 501 trillion Rupiah sisa devisa negara. Where did the other Rp.774 trillion Rupiah go? This happened during SBY and Boediono watch.

5. For the last 5 years, SBY administration spent average of 70% the entire national budget or APBN to pay for the central government operation cost. The rest, which was only 30% was given or spent for the 33 provincial governments. Now, how much do you think the municipality government at CITY and DISTRICT level will receive these remaining funds? It must be very small. That is why the road in Bandung just like bule madrotter said: has been neglected because the lack of funds. I was in Bandung last April 2009. Di Bandung bukan hanya banyak lubang berjalan, tapi juga banyak lubang di jalan! That is one of President SBY’s legacies.

6. For the last 5 years, SBY did not lead. He just reacted and followed the market.

Look at how he reacted in response to rise of fuel price. He raised domestic fuel price concurrently in his anticipation to compensate his potentially monstrous budget deficit (APBN). Then when the fuel price went down, he re-acted it again to lower the domestic fuel price to calm down his people. So, his policy is again within the scope of following and re-acting the market. To me, that is not a true and great leader. A true leader will make a policy and execute the policy to LEAD the market, to influence the market and not to follow or re-act the market. For the last 5 years, that is how I saw President SBY did. He carefully took his time to react and followed the market.

The list goes on….

One good news for SBY though, the majority of Indonesia people do not care with the details. Secondly, there are continuing efforts by SBY and his Presidential team members to conceal these facts from public discussion. That is very helpful for SBY and enhances his chance to win the next Presidential election unless….

Re-electing SBY is at best maintaining status quo. I don’t know about you, but I want to see a change, significant change in Indonesia. For the last 5 years, SBY hasn’t yet delivered any significant change! What makes you think that he will do differently for the next 5 years?

Sotomayor

Opinio Juris » Blog Archive » Not a Transnationalist. Some (Really) Early Thoughts on Judge Sotomayor

Not a Transnationalist. Some (Really) Early Thoughts on Judge Sotomayor

by Julian Ku

As a judge in the New York federal courts over the past 15 years, both at the district and appellate level, U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has had a fair number of cases involving the application of international law. She has never ruled on an Alien Tort Statute case, but my very quick scan suggests that, whatever else her critics can say, her judicial record does not suggest she will be a particularly “transnationalist” justice.

Closet Sovereigntist?

United States v. Ni Fa Yi, 951 F. Supp. 42 (S.D.N.Y. 1997), involved a defendant’s challenge to his prosecution under the Hostage Taking Act, and the International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages. While ruling for the government, Judge Sotomayor went out of her way to reject the government’s argument that the fact that the criminal statute was enacted to implement treaty obligations should automatically satisfy judicial scrutiny of the statute’s constitutionality. ”The Court agrees with defendant, however, that this begs the question: “[N]o agreement with a foreign nation can confer power on the Congress, or on any branch of Government, which is free from the constraints of the Constitution.” (Citing Reid v. Covert, 353 1, 16 (1957)).

Deferential to Executive Foreign Affairs Power?

European Commission v. RJR Nabisco, 355 F.3d 123 (2d Cir. 2004) involved an attempt by the European Commission to bring a RICO action in U.S. courts against tobacco companies for lost tax revenues. Invoking the common law “revenue rule”, Judge Sotomayor barred the action on the grounds that the suit essentially requires US courts to enforce European tax laws. In barring the action, though, she did leave open the possibility of executive intervention in the litigation as a mechanism to lift the bar imposed by the revenue rule. Interestingly, this was also part of the theory for the Supreme Court’s eventual decision to relax the revenue in another context, in an opinion by Justice Thomas. And it was the lack of intervention by the executive that led her to continue to bar the suit, even after the Supreme Court had remanded her earlier decision.

Staying Neutral on the Relationship Between International law and the Supremacy Clause

In Beharry v. Ashcroft, 339 F.3d 51 (2d Cir 2003), Judge Sotomayor went out of her way to avoid opining on a lower court decision (by Judge Jack Weinstein) that casually gave customary international law the same status as federal legislation under the Supremacy Clause. In reversing the lower court on statutory grounds, Judge Sotomayor offered this gentle non-opinion: “Nothing in our decision to reverse on other grounds the judgment of the district court should be seen as an endorsement of the district court’s holding that interpretation of the INA in this case is influenced or controlled by international law.”

Similarly, in Center for Reproductive Law v. Bush, 304 F 3d. 183 (2d Cir. 2002), in rejecting a lawsuit challenging the ban on funding for overseas abortions under constitutional and customary international law, Judge Sotomayor disposed of the customary international law argument in a single footnote: “As plaintiffs’ claims based on customary international law are substantively indistinguishable from their First Amendment claims, they are dismissed on the same ground. We express no view as to whether those claims are otherwise viable.”

irresponsible parent

Desmond Hatchett fathers 21 kids to 11 women | World News | News.com.au

Desmond Hatchett fathers 21 kids to 11 women

By staff writers

NEWS.com.au

May 30, 2009 12:01am


Desmond Hatchett
Record-breaker ... Desmond Hatchett says he knows the names and ages of all his offspring / AP

* Desmond Hatchett fathers 21 children
* Kids are to 11 different women
* In court for non-payment of child support

A MAN who has fathered 21 children with 11 different women yesterday claimed that he was "done" having children.

Desmond Hatchett's extraordinary brood came to light after authorities in Tennessee took the 29-year-old to court for non-payment of child support.

Mr Hatchett has apparently set a US record but denied he had set out to claim a place in history.

"It just happened," he said.

Mr Hatchett said he would not have any more children.

"I'm done. I'll say I'm done," he said, shaking his head.

Mr Hatchett told reporters outside court that he knew the names and ages of all his offspring.

The ages ranged from newborn to 11 years old.

Authorities said they planned to take half of his monthly salary to pay for the youngsters. But with Mr Hatchett earning just the minimum wage, officials said that worked out to slightly more than $2 a week for each.
Related Coverage

* Strange bedfellowsPerth Now, 16 May 2009
* RSL Girl in a MillionCourier Mail,
* Court defended over bridge deathThe Australian, 5 May 2009
* Single dads spend more on takeawayDaily Telegraph, 25 Apr 2009
* Custody arrest in SwedenThe Australian, 3 Apr 2009

Your Say

Make him pay for as long as it takes. Even when the children are past the age of 18, he will still owe the tax payer a lot of money.

(Read More)
Richard Smart of Britain

"The children can't all be supported by Desmond so the state of Tennessee has had to step in," his lawyer Keith Pope said.

But many Knoxville residents are angry the state has paid, with some extremists even calling for Mr Hatchett to be castrated.

Mr Hatchett's name appeared on court documents 11 times representing 15 of his 21 children.

Authorities were now braced for more women coming forward to claim he was the father of their children after he appeared on local TV. Mr Hatchett even boasted of fathering four children by different women in the same year.

He said the women he was involved with all knew that he had other children.

One mother, who had two children with Mr Hatchett, said she should get $90 a month but rarely received any child support.

"It's frustrating, but usually when I ask he gives it to me," she said yesterday.

Authorities in Knoxville ordered Mr Hatchett to court to explain how he intended to pay child support. He arrived for the hearing with about $600 in his pocket.

AIDS

Komisi Penanggulangan AIDS

ICAAP ke-9 di Bali 9-13 Agustus 2009

JAKARTA, JUMAT - Indonesia akhirnya terpilih menjadi tuan rumah Kongres Internasional AIDS di Asia dan Pasifik (ICAAP) ke-9 setelah memenangkan proses tender dari Cina, Korea dan Vietnam. Kongres ICAAP ke-9 akan diselenggarakan di Bali, 9-13 Agustus 2009.

"ICAAP ini menjadi forum untuk saling berbagi pengalaman di kalangan pengampu kepentingan isu HIV, hikmah ajar dalam berbagai inisiatif penanganan epidemi ini, penemuan baru dari berbagai kegiatan penelitian, serta berbagai ketrampilan yang diperlukan baik oleh kalangan medis maupun aktivis HIV," kata Ketua Panitia Penyelenggara ICAAP ke-9 Zubairi Djoerban di Jakarta, Jumat (13/6). ICAAP ke-9 Jumat ini diluncurkan oleh Menteri Koordinator Kesejahteraan Rakyat sekaligus Ketua Komisi Penanggulangan AIDS Nasional Aburizal Bakrie di kantor Menko Kesra.

Tema yang diangkat dalam ICAAP ke-9 ini adalah Empowering People, Strengthening Network (Pemberdayaan Masyarakat dan Penguatan Jaringan). Menurut Zubairi Djoerban, tema ini mewakili agenda besar dalam upaya penanggulangan HIV di wilayah Asia dan Pasifik, termasuk Indonesia.

Sudah banyak bukti bahwa upaya pencegahan dan penanggulangan HIV sangat efektif jika melibatkan Orang dengan HIV/AIDS, komunitas rentan serta terdampak HIV, dan seluruh lapisan masyarakat. Walaupun keterlibatan itu hanya mungkin jika mereka telah melakukan upaya pemberdayaan diri.

Agenda penting

Ketua Komisi KPA Nasional Aburizal Bakrie menyatakan, Epidemi HIV adalah salah satu agenda penting pemerintah Indonesia. HIV adalah penyebab utama kematian di beberapa negara Asia dan Pasifik. Sekarang ini hampir lima juta orang terinfeksi HIV dan 300.000 orang meninggal karena HIV.

"Para ahli memperkirakan tanpa adanya intervensi maka pada tahun 2020, sebanyak delapan juta orang akan terinfe ksi dan HIV akan menjadi penyebab utama kematian penduduk usia produktif. Hal ini juga akan mengakibatkan biaya kesehatan meningkat menjadi 2 dollar AS per tahun," kata Aburizal Bakrie.

Pada tahun 2010 di Indonesia, diperkirakan ada 400.000 orang terinfek si HIV dan 100.000 kematian disebabkan oleh HIV. Tanpa ada intervensi yang cukup, maka pada tahun 2015 sebanyak 1 juta orang akan terinfeksi, 350.000 orang meninggal karena HIV dan 38.500 kasus HIV pada anak.

Terkait masalah pendanaa, menurut Aburizal Bakrie, hal itu masih menjadi tantangan bagi Indonesia. Harus diakui bahwa hingga saat ini baru sekitar 30 persen dari total kebutuhan dana penanggulangan HIV yang disediakan oleh pemerintah.

Namun ini tidak berarti komitmen pemerintah rendah. Sebagai bukti, anggaran yang disedikan oleh pemerintah daerah untuk penanganan epidemi HIV meningkat tajam.

"Di tingkat provinsi, anggaran untuk HIV meningkat dari Rp 8 milyar di tahun 2004 menjadi Rp 57 milyar pada tahun 2007. Ini terjadi pada 23 dari 33 provinsi di Indonesia," kata Aburizal Bakrie.

Hostile government in Iran

Physicians Who Addressed HIV/AIDS In Iran Convicted Of Plot To Overthrow Iranian Government

ranian physicians Arash Alaei and Kamiar Alaei, brothers who implemented Iran's first HIV prevention program, were among four men sent to prison Saturday for allegedly participating in a U.S.-backed plot to overthrow the Iranian government, the New York Times reports (Fathi, New York Times, 1/20).

According to the AP/Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the Alaei brothers and two other men were convicted and sentenced Saturday. The identities of the two other men involved in the case were not released. All four men were sentenced to prison, although the length of the sentences was not announced, according to the AP/Star-Tribune. According to Masoud Shafii, a lawyer for the Alaeis, the brothers were tried under a law that allows anyone who cooperates with a foreign hostile government against Iran to be sentenced to one to 10 years in prison (Karimi, AP/Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 1/19). Shafii said he expects a verdict within a few days and prison sentences of up to 10 years. He added that he would appeal the ruling (Mostaghim/Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, 1/20).

Sarah Kolloch of Physicians for Human Rights said the group does not know why the Alaei brothers were "targeted" by the Iranian government. "Most of [the Alaei brothers'] presentations were about innovative work in Iran on HIV prevention," Kolloch said, adding, "If anything, Iran should have been excited that something positive like this was coming from Iran." Shafii said that the brothers' "foreign cooperation and relations were only scientific and cultural and not against the country" (AP/Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 1/19). Frank Donaghue, head of PHR, said, "To all appearances, the arrest and now the trial of these two prominent and widely traveled AIDS doctors seem to be an effort to shut the door on medical and public health collaboration on global health crises" (Los Angeles Times, 1/20).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

AIDS in Iran

Iran's AIDS-prevention Program Among World's Most Progressive

""Four years ago, if you talked about condoms, you couldn't go on the
air," he said, referring to state-run television. "This year, they
said, `You are free to say what you like.' I just kept saying, `Use
condoms. Use condoms. Use condoms.'"


TEHRAN, Iran - It took 30 meetings just to create a slim AIDS-awareness handbook for Iran's conservative high schools. A drawing of a condom disappeared early on; a photo of a syringe survived. A mention of sexual transmission was approved, but only with a reminder that sex before marriage is forbidden.


Dr. Arash Alaei, the main architect of Iran's acclaimed national HIV-prevention program, displays the awareness booklet he helped create for distribution among Iranian high school students. (HANNAH ALLAM, KRT)
Even after the government's wordsmiths were satisfied, AIDS workers in Tehran had to take the book south to the holy city of Qom, the spiritual center of Iran's all-powerful clergy. To everyone's surprise, the clerics endorsed it.

Iran's fight against the spread of HIV hinges on a delicate give-and-take between activists who talk frankly about sex and drugs and the ruling ayatollahs, who fiercely protect the Islamic Republic's puritan image. The combination has made Iran the Middle East leader in preventing HIV and AIDS.

The country's program, which melds deep-rooted religious values with cutting-edge research, is being exported to Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Pakistan and other Muslim nations.

"I told my colleagues in the United Arab Emirates, `You're not more rigid than us. We're the only country in the world where it's the law to wear a head scarf, where it's a pure Islamic government, where you can't drink,'" said Dr. Arash Alaei, one of Iran's most respected AIDS researchers. "`If we have a prevention program, why don't you?'"

In a region where other Muslim governments ignore the epidemic, quarantine HIV-infected people or preach abstinence as the only solution, Iran's approach is especially remarkable.

It still doles out floggings to Iranians caught with alcohol, but it gives clean syringes and methadone treatment to heroin addicts. Health workers pass out condoms to prostitutes. Government clinics in every region offer free HIV testing, counseling and treatment. A state-backed magazine just began a monthly column that profiles HIV-positive Iranians, and last year the postal service unveiled a stamp emblazoned with a red ribbon for AIDS awareness. This year the government will devote an estimated $30 million to the program.

One of Iran's most acclaimed advances comes from its notoriously secretive network of prisons, where hundreds of drug-addicted inmates sometimes share the same makeshift syringe to inject heroin smuggled in by guards or visiting relatives. In a startling acknowledgment of sex and drugs even in its most closely guarded quarters, the Tehran administration has made condoms and needles available in detention centers across the country.

"Iran now has one of the best prison programs for HIV in not just the region, but in the world," said Dr. Hamid Setayesh, the coordinator for the U.N. AIDS office in Tehran. "They're passing out condoms and syringes in prisons. This is unbelievable. In the whole world, there aren't more than six or seven countries doing that."

Iran's national response still faces obstacles, especially when it comes to reducing the shame and isolation that HIV-infected Iranians endure. The government reports 12,000 people with HIV; health workers say the real figure is closer to 70,000. Many HIV-positive Iranians are reluctant to tell relatives and co-workers about their diagnosis, fearful they'll be cast out of their homes or fired from their jobs.

But the program's architects are turning to the clergy for help in combating the stigma of a disease that's inextricably linked to sex in the minds of many Muslims.

A year ago, Setayesh sent questionnaires to the most influential Shiite Muslim clerics to elicit their views on condom use, government's role in AIDS prevention and how society should deal with HIV-infected Iranians. He received 17 handwritten responses, nearly all in favor of the government's efforts. The U.N. AIDS office plans to compile them into a book to be distributed at mosques.

"You should not discriminate against these people," one mullah wrote. "You have no excuse not to use condoms," another responded. "You should pay for this from the public funds of the government," an ayatollah ordered.

Iran's first reported HIV infection came in 1987, when a hemophiliac child tested positive after a blood transfusion. The government formed a national committee, but it wasn't until nearly a decade later that it began to take prevention seriously, said Alaei, one of the pioneers of Iranian AIDS research.

In 1997, the government tested for the virus among high-risk populations such as prisoners, truck drivers and patients with other infectious diseases. The highest rate of infection was in Iran's prisons, one of which was in Alei's hometown of Kermanshah, northwest of Tehran. Alaei was startled to learn that 400 cases had been detected there.

In 1999 he and his brother, Kamiar, had just finished their medical studies. They persuaded the nervous director of a local medical school to give them space for research.

"We had one room, the files of 400 infected prisoners and one office worker. We couldn't even have a sign on the door," Alaei recalled. "It was top secret."

The Alaei brothers used the prison files to scour the city for HIV-positive convicts and their families. After the government-testing program had confirmed the infections, he said, most of the men received no care or counseling. By the time Alaei tracked them down, 176 of the 400 already were dead. Most had committed suicide.

"If they were released, their families had disowned them. In jail, other prisoners avoided them and prison workers who didn't know about transmission just kept them in one room and rolled in a food cart for their meals," Alaei said. "When we shook hands with them, they cried. Before that, everyone had rejected them."

When Kermanshah's representative in Parliament asked the government to build an AIDS hospital, residents ransacked his office. Alaei said they were terrified that an AIDS facility in their city would turn the country against them, making them the butt of jokes and limiting their children's chances for marriage. The legislator lost his seat in the next election.

Then the wives of Kermanshah's addicts began testing HIV-positive, 35 in the first year alone. Next came the children. The families were terrified. Opposition to an HIV clinic dried up.

With community and government backing, the Alaei brothers soon expanded their operation to two rooms, then the entire floor of the medical school and, finally, to cities throughout Iran. The World Health Organization named Alaei's clinics the best-practice model for the Middle East and North Africa.

"Paying attention to the programs and progress of the developed countries is very good," Alaei said. "But you should never forget to base your program on your own society, your own demographics, your own religion and culture."

With the election last summer of the ultraconservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, many AIDS workers feared a rollback of their hard-won progress. Indeed, some new Cabinet members expressed disapproval of the national campaign's growing boldness in addressing the sexual transmission of HIV.

Ahmadinejad's health minister told a news conference that AIDS wasn't a priority for the government. The education minister stopped the printing of pamphlets for young students, saying they needed revisions, Setayesh said. Another government official told Alaei that the red handbook he'd worked so hard to publish was embarrassing to Iran's image. It was uncertain whether distribution would continue.

Then Iran's characteristically unpredictable president surprised AIDS workers at a governmental meeting on the intertwined problems of opiate addiction and HIV by coming out in favor of distributing methadone.

AIDS-prevention specialists admit they can't know whether that remark signals that Iran's program won't be scaled back, but researcher Alaei, for one, says he's optimistic that progress will continue.

"Four years ago, if you talked about condoms, you couldn't go on the air," he said, referring to state-run television. "This year, they said, `You are free to say what you like.' I just kept saying, `Use condoms. Use condoms. Use condoms.'"

Montgomery Teen Nears Perfect School Attendance Record for 13 Years - washingtonpost.com

Here, Here! 13 Years Of Perfect Attendance.

Seniors Nikita Mani, left, and Stefanie Zaner walk to class. Stefanie, a straight-A student, will attend the University of Maryland. The past two years
Seniors Nikita Mani, left, and Stefanie Zaner walk to class. Stefanie, a straight-A student, will attend the University of Maryland. The past two years "have probably been the most stressful years of my life," Stefanie said. (By Sarah L. Voisin -- The Washington Post)
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To keep the streak alive, the Stafford teenager has passed up national baseball tournaments. Even an ankle sprain sophomore year, he said, "wasn't a good-enough reason to stay home."

Stefanie, like Kristen and Austin, didn't enter kindergarten intent on never missing school. The goal crept up on her. Her principal at Darnestown Elementary School, Larry Chep, gave out annual awards for perfect attendance. She won a couple, then found she "really liked being recognized for something." By the end of fifth grade, when Chep recognized her for six consecutive years without absence, Stefanie stood alone.

Chep remembers her as "one of those kids you want in your school." Stefanie returns to Darnestown Elementary each spring to help her fourth-grade teacher take down her classroom and organize her closet.

Iron Man Cal earned his nickname by playing through injury. So did Stefanie, in a way, coming to school sick or, more often, dead tired. She's never had a serious illness or a high fever, she said, a claim to which friends and teachers attest. If anything, sniffly classmates fretted about making her sick. Austin and Kristen, too, are preternaturally healthy.

Stefanie will attend the University of Maryland in its honors program. She wants to be a doctor. She is a straight-A student.

"That's since third grade," her mother said in the family kitchen.

"Since fourth grade," Stefanie interjected.

And just what sort of person earns straight A's for 10 years -- make that nine -- without missing a day of school? A perfectionist. A worrier. An overachiever. Stefanie is all of those, by her own account.

Me and Bandung

I am passing some main roads here and found so many ads which are not supposed to be there. This city has been fulled of rubish and junks since I went abroad two years ago. I have observed the city where I live now, is getting crowded and dirtier. Been stressfull adjusting to the new situation here. I need to cope this though. Melbourne is really different from where I live now. Anyway, that is life. cheers:-l

Sent from my phone using trutap

FAIR TRADE

Starbucks Challenge 4.0 | green LA girl

Starbucks says it’ll French-press a cup of fair trade coffee for any customer who specifically asks for a fair trade cup. During previous Challenges, Starbucks admitted it hasn’t quite lived up to this policy and promised to work on fixing its “break down in customer service.”

So during the month of May 2006, we’re asking activists to go visit their local Starbucks and see how easy it is to get a cup of fair trade coffee.

The Challenge
1) Visit your local Starbucks this month and ask: “Could I get a cup of fair trade coffee?”
2) Tell us what happened next. Ideally, the barista should immediately offer you a French-pressed cup of Cafe Estima — Starbucks’ only fair trade certified blend.
3) If your barista gives you a blank look, and you’re feeling courageous, try asking specifically for a French-press of the Cafe Estima blend. If the barista says it’ll cost you extra, say that HQ told you that you should be able to pay just for the size you asked for. And as always, be nice to the baristas :)

BLOGGERS: simply blog about what happened and tag it with “starbuckschallenge” (all one word) on del.icio.us (put the Starbucks location in the “extended” description). We’ll pull all articles into a feed. If you do not know about del.icio.us, then just email either City Hippy or green LA girl.

NON-BLOGGERS: tell us what happened by writing a comment on either City Hippy or green LA girl, or send an email to City Hippy or green LA girl, and we’ll do the rest.

Win a prize!
On June 1, City Hippy and green LA girl will award prizes: 1 to the person who takes the most challenges, 1 to the person with the most interesting, entertaining, educational, insightful, or funny report.

The prizes? An enviro-friendly, reusable, and chic workplace dish set (right, a $39 value!) will go to the person who takes the most challenges. A 2 lb bag of fair trade coffee from Just Coffee will go to the person with the most interesting report.

Challenge results
On June 1, City Hippy and green LA girl will contact Starbucks, either commending them on their progress on barista education efforts about fair trade, or asking them to, um, work on that.

Have a fair trade day.

telecommuter

Seven Surprising Stay-Home Salaries

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that at last count, 13.7 million Americans were telecommuting. Only one in four had a formal agreement in place with their employers. The vast majority simply arrange with a supervisor to spend a day or two a week out of the office.
In Pursuit of a Telecommute

Highly educated workers were the most likely to telecommute, according to the BLS study. If telecommuting is your goal, career training can be a good first step. Online degree programs are also a great way to see if you've got motivation and discipline it takes to work independently.

The BLS advises telecommuting hopefuls to seek out employers with established telework programs. Certain jobs and industries are more prone to this arrangement, and some of them pay really well. Here are seven stay-home jobs with standout salaries.
Sales Representatives

More than ever, big companies are farming out their sales forces. But instead of jobs going overseas, they're going to the suburbs. According to the BLS, one in five sales reps telecommute. The highest paying sales jobs usually involve technical and scientific products. These sales jobs are more likely to require a bachelor's degree. Studying marketing, business, or communications can be excellent preparation for this line of work.
Stay-Home Salary: $68,270
Financial Analysts

Financial analysts help large companies and non-profit organizations figure out how, when, and where to invest their money. Often employed by investment banks, mutual funds, and insurance companies, the independent nature of the work lends itself to working from the home office. You'll need a bachelor's degree in finance, business administration, economics, or accounting to get in on the ground floor.
Stay-Home Salary: $70,400
Personal Financial Advisors

This is another high finance, home-office profession. Instead of working with large endowments, personal financial advisors help individuals manage their money, protect their assets, and plan for retirement. Financial advisors work for financial services firms or investment and planning firms. A minimum of a bachelor's degree in finance, business administration, or accounting is required.
Stay-Home Salary: $67,660
Web Designers

Two career paths that are particularly well suited to telecommuting are graphic design and computing. These career paths intersect for the job of Web developers, also called Web designers. These creative techies craft a Web site's look and make sure it functions. Most employers are looking for a bachelor's degree, and many schools offer programs specifically in Web site design.
Stay-Home Salary: $47,000 to $71,500
Software Developers

These tech-savvy telecommuters design and develop commuter applications. Therefore, they need to be well versed in programming languages as well as operating systems. A bachelor's degree in computer science or software engineering is required, but your education is likely to pay off. The BLS predicts 38 percent growth through 2016, making this one of the nation's fastest growing occupations.
Stay-Home Salary: $83,130
Accountant

Accounting is all about keeping the fiscal house in order--paying taxes, reporting earnings, analyzing budgets, and guiding investments. The individual nature of the work allows many accountants to routinely work from home. Certification and a degree in accounting are typical job requirements.
Stay-Home Salary: $57,060
Marketing Manager

Managers (in any department) are more likely to regularly work from home. Marketing managers may find creativity blooms with the freedom of the home office. Increasingly, a master's degree in business administration is becoming the norm for marketing managers, though a good track record and a bachelor's degree may suffice.
Stay-Home Salary: $104,400
The Truth Behind the Telecommute

Technically, to be considered a telecommuter you must regularly works eight or more paid hours at home each week. Telecommuting can cut down on a killer commute or carve out more time for the kids. It can help you find a better work-life balance. But let's be clear--there are a few things telecommuting is not designed for.

1. It is not a substitute for child care. Imagine trying to hold a conference call while entertaining your two-year-old.
2. It is not for the recluse. The key to successful telecommuting is communication, particularly with your supervisors.
3. It is not entry-level workers. According to the BLS Occupational Outlook Quarterly, it is far more effective for employees to make a case for telecommuting after proving their value.

Working at home can help you save on skyrocketing gas prices, but it makes financial sense for your employer, too. A study done for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas showed telecommuters earning $44,000 a year saved their company an average of $10,000. And, telecommuting options improve morale, productivity, and worker retention.

I am a plastic bag and I am 100% recyclable

Plastic and proud: Big corps say plastic doesn’t pollute, people do | green LA girl

The latest fashionista bag’s a (semi) eco-friendly, “I’m not a plastic bag” tote designed by Anya Hindmarch, proudly showcased on the arms of Jessica Biel, Keira Knightley, and Reese Witherspoon — despite the fact that these bags’ve been shipped from far far away, are not fair trade, and are often sold encased in multiple plastic bags.

The ironies, however, haven’t quelled the fears of the plastic industry. In fact, the plastic industry’s created its attempt at a satire bag — a plastic bag emblazoned with the slogan “I AM a Plastic Bag AND I’m 100% Recyclable.” (via Treehugger)

Yep — This new plastic attempt at preserving business as usual comes from the Progressive Bag Alliance — whose members are leading plastic bag manufacturers.

On the one hand, you gotta give old-school big corp polluters props for their stab at creativity. Not only are they making an attempt at post-modern re-appropriation of popular slogans, they’re using newish media, auctioning off these plastic bags on eBay.

On the other hand, Progressive Bag Alliance’s greenwashing attempt’s one of the oldest tricks in the bag. What corporate polluters know v. well now is that it’s a helluva lot easier to displace responsibility for pollution on the public than it is to clean up the mess of pollution they’ve created.

Take Keep America Beautiful, for ex. Created by the soft drink industry, KAB was a v. successful greenwashing attempt to help engineer the conversion from a reuse culture to a one-use culture. There was more profit to be made in one-use packaging, after all, since it forced consumers to buy the packaging with every drink, instead of simply returning a bottle for a refund.

To keep the packaging money rolling in, the soda industry created KAB — with the message that the problem lies not with the corporations churning out tons and tons of one-use packaging, but with the consumer who fails to dispose of that packaging properly.

The same argument’s being made in the efforts of grassroots activists to ban styrofoam from their communities. Despite the fact that this largely non-recyclable plastic foam won’t biodegrade, pollutes our oceans, and kills marine life, businesses argue against a styrofoam ban saying that the problem’s not the styrofoam, but individuals who litter.

Luckily, at least in Santa Monica, a styrofoam ban passed — as it has in a few other progressive cities (a similar ban’s being considered in LA). Yet what we see is large corps producing pollution continuously attempting to displace their grossness on the individual consumer.

Why? Well, for one, if corps admit they’re creating pollution, they may be pushed to clean it up — and that could get expensive for them.

But more importantly, admitting to pollution guilt would mean that corps’d be forced to, you know, stop hawking plastic bags.

Now I know most people think of plastic bags as a “free” commodity — but really, we only think that because it doesn’t hit us as a line item on our grocery store receipts. Obviously, stores have to BUY plastic bags — and that cost’s gonna be passed on to the consumer, usually as higher prices on the goods we buy.

If plastic bags appeared on our grocery bill — even as a teensy 1 - 5 cent item — it’d get the public thinking ’bout their choices. That’s certainly what’s happened in California, with our CRV laws for bottles and cans. The receipt for the Trader Joe’s “Banilla” smoothie I drank yesterday has a second line — “CRV 0.05″ — letting me know that I’m down an extra 5 cents unless I recycle the bottle to get that nickel back.

In most states however, there’s still no monetary disincentive for buying one-use bottles and cans, and no incentive for recycling — which is why our recycling rate’s just 23% nationwide (much higher for California). Even in Cali though, we’ve got no incentive to bring our own bags — or to recycle the plastic bags we already use — even if LA-area stores’ll be required to offer plastic bag recycling centers soon.

So — Don’t be fooled by KAB or “Progressive Bag Alliance” or the like. Support REAL reuse and recyling programs. And in the meantime, bring your own sexy shopping bag!

[Tote bag image from yamakazz; plastic bag image from eBay; crossposted on BlogHer]

Update, 7/23/08: A roundup of all the state, county, and city level stuff happening to reduce styrofoam and plastic bag use in the LA area.

Small is beautiful

Quote from Small is Beautiful - E.F. Schumacher

posted by devonwhittle on May 25, 2009
Quote from Small is Beautiful - E.F. Schumacher

From Chapter 6 of Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher:

images.jpeg

Lord Snow tells us that when educated people deplore the ‘illiteracy of scientists’ he sometimes ask, ‘How many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics?’ The response, he reports, is usually cold and negative. ‘Yet,’ he says, ‘I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?’ Such a statement challenges the entire basis of our civilisation. What matters is the tool-box of ideas with which, by which, through which, we experience and interpret the world. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is nothing more than a working hypothesis suitable for various types of scientific research. On the other hand - a work by Shakespeare: teeming with the most vital ideas about the inner development of man, showing the whole grandeur and misery of a human existence. How could these two things be equivalent? What do I miss, as a human being, if I have never heard of the Second Law of Thermodynamics? The answer is: nothing. And what do I miss by not knowing Shakespeare? Unless I get my understanding from another source, I simply miss my life. Shall we tell our children that one thing is as good as another - here a bit of knowledge of physics, and there a bit of knowledge of literature?

Makes me think I need to start reading more fiction…

No such thing as "deleted" on the Internet

By Christopher Null

It's always fun to write about research that you can actually try out for yourself.

Try this: Take a photo and upload it to Facebook, then after a day or so, note what the URL to the picture is (the actual photo, not the page on which the photo resides), and then delete it. Come back a month later and see if the link works. Chances are: It will.

Facebook isn't alone here. Researchers at Cambridge University (so you know this is legit, people!) have found that nearly half of the social networking sites don't immediately delete pictures when a user requests they be removed. In general, photo-centric websites like Flickr were found to be better at quickly removing deleted photos upon request.

Why do "deleted" photos stick around so long? The problem relates to the way data is stored on large websites: While your personal computer only keeps one copy of a file, large-scale services like Facebook rely on what are called content delivery networks to manage data and distribution. It's a complex system wherein data is copied to multiple intermediate devices, usually to speed up access to files when millions of people are trying to access the service simultaneously. (Yahoo! Tech is served by dozens of servers, for example.) But because changes aren't reflected across the CDN immediately, ghost copies of files tend to linger for days or weeks.

In the case of Facebook, the company says data may hang around until the URL in question is reused, which is usually "after a short period of time." Though obviously that time can vary considerably.

Of course, once a photo escapes from the walled garden of a social network like Facebook, the chances of deleting it permanently fall even further. Google's caching system is remarkably efficient at archiving copies of web content, long after it's removed from the web. Anyone who's ever used Google Image Search can likely tell you a story about clicking on a thumbnail image, only to find that the image has been deleted from the website in question -- yet the thumbnail remains on Google for months. And then there are services like the Wayback Machine, which copy entire websites for posterity, archiving data and pictures forever.

The lesson: Those drunken party photos you don't want people to see? Simply don't upload them to the web, ever, because trying to delete them after you sober up is a tough proposition.

EU and virtual MEP

BBC NEWS | Europe | Europe may elect 'virtual MEPs'

The European elections next month may lead to the creation of 18 "virtual" Euro MPs, who will not take office until the Lisbon Treaty takes effect.

The treaty has already been ratified by most of the 27 member states, but the Republic of Ireland is expected to hold a second referendum on it in October.

Lisbon can only come into force if all have ratified it - and Irish voters rejected it last June.

The 736 seats contested in this election will become 754 under Lisbon.

But even the figure of 754 is a transitional one, because the treaty sets the final number at 751.

It was agreed that Germany would keep its total of 99 MEPs until the next European elections, in 2014, when its number would fall to 96, in line with the Lisbon Treaty.

Political tussle looms

Spain, which is in line to get four of the extra 18 seats under Lisbon, is "pushing for a solution to advance the arrival of these people", a senior European Parliament official told the BBC.
LISBON TREATY PROGRESS
# Approved by parliament: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, UK
# Defeated by referendum: Irish Republic
# Challenges: Legal objections delaying ratification in Germany, Polish president also delaying ratification, Czech president yet to sign treaty

In this election Spain has just one national list - a national constituency - so the job of selecting another four MEPs should be relatively easy, according to the official, who declined to be named.

But the situation is "far less clear" in countries where voters can choose individual candidates on party lists, or where there are several regional constituencies, as in the UK, the official explained.

After the June election there could be rivalry between regions and parties to get extra MEPs sent to Brussels. But it all depends on what happens to the Lisbon Treaty.

This election is being held under the terms of the Nice Treaty, which set the number of MEPs at 736 - down from the current 785.

The parliament official said it was possible that the extra 18 MEPs would get observer status in the parliament, once the Lisbon Treaty takes effect.

But the official said no formal decision had been taken about their salaries or expenses.

"In recent years all the observer MEPs were members of national parliaments, so they got the national parliament's salary. The European Parliament just paid the real cost of their travel expenses," the official said.

Governments' role

During the EU's enlargement, MEPs from new member states had observer status between the signing of the accession treaty and their country's actual accession date.

It will be up to the new parliament to decide the transitional arrangements for the extra 18 MEPs, the official said. They could get observer status if Lisbon takes effect in late 2010 or in 2011.

But a decision of the European Council - the member states' governments - would be required for them to take up their full duties before the next European elections in 2014.

This year a new salaries and expenses system is coming into force, putting all MEPs on a monthly EU salary of 7,000 euros (£6,160; $9,790). On top of that, their monthly allowance - for office costs and travel - will be 4,052 euros.

Under the Lisbon Treaty, France, Sweden and Austria will get two extra MEPs each, while the UK, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Latvia, Slovenia, and Malta will each gain one MEP.

EU foreign ministers could agree at one of their regular meetings to give the 18 MEPs their full status before the 2014 elections, the parliament official said.

"If it's an amendment to a treaty, or a transitional measure, it requires an intergovernmental conference (IGC). But the difference sometimes is only in the wording. In the last half-hour of their meeting the foreign ministers can say 'this is an IGC'," the official explained.

The Lisbon Treaty's progress is further complicated by the fact that legal "guarantees" for Ireland, covering sovereignty, neutrality and some social issues such as abortion, are being bolted onto the treaty. This extra text then also has to be ratified by all member states.

BANDUNG JAKARTA

I'm in buah batu, i have missed melbourne so much. I wish i could come back, anyway I will be in jakarta 2-4 june

Sent from my phone using trutap

interesting comments about Obama

Think Progress » Steele: Obama ‘Was Not Vetted Because The Press Fell In Love With The Black Man Running For The Office’

#
ReasonResonance Says:

You guys attack like red ants coming across a picnic.

Check this out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3LZNc_TP_o&feature=player_embedded

You voted for a man who guaranteed to withdraw the troops from Iraq within a given time frame. He's switched that mantra and quietly sent more while violence is escalating both there and in Afghanistan whose getting more troops, too.

He's switched his initial motive towards Israel and now favors Palestine.

He has said whatever is needed and the intelligentsia of the D party have blindly followed.

California is a microcosm of what is going to happen to the United States b/c of the extraordinarily egregious spending by the Federal Government; initiated by Obama. Even more ridiculously similar is to think of a teenager just out of high school receiving CC after CC offer... and taking them... only for emergencies... or someone winning 250g and helping out their friends or going directly to the dealership and getting a new Cadillac Es-kah-lah-day with 24's and some leather siht on the inside... and then broke in a year...

China owns a third of the United States, now. Why do you think Hilary went over there and begged them to purchase trillions of dollars in bonds? They have money and we don't. I'm not blaming what I'm about to say on Obama, so don't misconstrue it. Social Security is bankrupt, Medicare and Medicaid are hemorrhaging money. China is like a parasite feeding on the US... the wild part of it is that this parasite is much larger than the host and when the host becomes useless to the parasite, this one'll just eat it. Hell, even China is trying to tell us not to socialize(int the political sense) China is amassing the largest military fleet ever known to man; it makes the Spanish Armada look like yellow rubber duckies floating in a kiddie pool with numbers on the bottom. It's arsenal is ever-growing and it's military is larger than ours. They have barge after barge after barge of steel just sitting there off their shores; biding time to enact an even greater impact on world economics. We won't even bring up Russias grasp on the gaping sucking would that is our economy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/24/AR2008022402094.html

It's funny to me that you pick an imbeciles rant to lock onto as a targeted aversion to looking at the practices of the President.

We now have the President backtracking on items of National Security. It's like having a house full of expensive items and placing them in front of every window, leaving the door open with a sign on the lawn that says "Out of town 'til next Wednesday, you can watch the TV, but please don't take it."

You flame on the response of someone stating their opinion and give each other wi-fives and kudos and thumbs up for belittling him...

Maybe you should take the time you spend posting to research just exactly what is going on on Capitol Hill. Think about it when the price of a loaf of bread; a standard in identifying the amount of inflation if you didn't know, reaches $12 a loaf and you're scrounging through the couch, car, dryer, vaccum, or whatever... yeah, I've been broke, to purchase a can of condensed milk.

I don't care who won... I care about what's going to come, though, I tighten my bootstraps every day and press on, praying that my efforts will be enough to help keep me and my co-workers employed a while longer.

You look at gasoline and the UAE... check out how much of our fuel comes from Australia and Mexico...

You flaunt absurdities at others and think that you've had your day because of some cheeky comment or remark riddled with sarcasm and "wit"... while in blind support of initiatives proposed that you know nothing about... how many of you idiots are idiots?! If you didn't raise your hand, then take your next lonely night and your next and your next and start reframing your ideology through research and not the snappy headline that catches your eye... That's how I ended up on this Shite of a blogment...

You wanna impress somebody? Impress yourself, look it up, don't believe what you hear in the media; whichever entity you decide to watch... journalism is dead; it's all biased to one end or another and neither will tell you what's ahead down the road. whether it's conservative talk radio, liberal news or conservative. Open your eyes to what's going on and effing look into it.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and I don't ascribe to any group... I'm just a hard working guy who scratches out a living and has taken the time to dig a little deeper than the surface to actually looking into what's going on.

No one is perfect, not Obama, not McCain, not the Clintons, (bill started this economic crap hole by the way, look it up)

Pay attention to the world around you, you who claim to be knowledgeable. You're all being guided like sheep; through repetition and guile; you're all products of Pavlovian theory and have made it law. Lemmings running with the pack over the cliff (even though that's not really documented). You view the world through rose colored glasses with your personal beliefs and ideals that have been taught to you through repetition. How many of you with just the mention of the word Ducktales, could hum the tune? How many of you ever look past your nose and look down the path ahead of you? Pick your head up!

Yeah, go ahead and call it a sermon... Half of you have probably stopped reading this by now, anyway, and are posting something asinine and blatantly much more stupider than things posted before.

Just remember this... when you go to post... note the time stamp on them... are you people laid off or are you just dkicing the day away wasting your employers money?
May 22nd, 2009 at 8:01 pm
#
pete Says:

Not that I have any reason to respond, I'm retired, myself. Plus I have a cold so I didn't feel like socializing. As for the rest, although it bears the precision of a copy-paste, it could be a contender for the word salad award. I'll leave that for others to judge.

As for your concerns about President Obama's record thus far compared to his "campaign promises"? Some are well deserved if not particularly objective. Here's my take:

Obama announced a 16 month deadline for Iraq as conditions allow and always said that events would influence his plans. I don't know where you got the "favors Palestine". He said he would change the personnel and policies governing national security and that's what he's doing. There are some things that I would prefer to see handled with different priority but I'm basically pleased with the young Administration, and I'll tell ya why.

Obama has done exactly as I had hoped based on his history and the campaign. He's made rational, even when I disagree, decisions based on real-time events. I didn't vote for a dogma. I voted for a capable person who, apparently, has the ability to get things done. And he's done it without anger, bluster, or drawing lines in the sand.

After that point it just seems to trail off into a bunch of vague conspiracy theories and doomsday scenarios. The fact of the matter is that America has to pay up for past excesses. However, since you mentioned fuel prices, you can't blame that on the "libruls".

The oil industry was established with the guile and culpability of the whole GOP deregulation movement. The whole industry is designed to rape the economy at a whim. And that's exactly what they did last summer with the insane trading and appear to be setting it up again. You can't blame it on "libruls". You can't blame it on "Arabs". You can only blame it on the unregulated American oil industry that the GOP assembled.
May 22nd, 2009 at 8:37 pm

Racist and Fascist?

Think Progress » Steele: Obama ‘Was Not Vetted Because The Press Fell In Love With The Black Man Running For The Office’

Steele: Obama ‘Was Not Vetted Because The Press Fell In Love With The Black Man Running For The Office’

RNC Chair Michael Steele closeupApparently unable to learn from egregious mistakes from the recent past, RNC Chairman Michael Steele once again took to the radio airwaves today as a guest host for Bill Bennett. Earlier this week, Steele declared “an end to the era of Republicans looking backward.” This morning, however, Steele revisited the 2008 election to insist that President Obama had never been “vetted” because the press “fell in love with the black man”:

STEELE: The problem that we have with this president is that we don’t know [Obama]. He was not vetted, folks. … He was not vetted, because the press fell in love with the black man running for the office. “Oh gee, wouldn’t it be neat to do that? Gee, wouldn’t it make all of our liberal guilt just go away? We can continue to ride around in our limousines and feel so lucky to live in an America with a black president.” Okay that’s wonderful, great scenario, nice backdrop. But what does he stand for? What does he believe? … So we don’t know. We just don’t know.

Steele lamented the “missed opportunity” in “dissecting” Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s influence on Obama, and “the lessons [Obama] learned at his [Wright's] knee.” Listen to it:

That Steele would suggest Obama won the presidency because of his race is striking considering that Steele himself has had to face — and bat down — similar allegations. In 2006, when Steele ran for lieutenant governor in Maryland, a Baltimore Sun editorial said that he brought “little to the team but the color of his skin.” Steele slammed the implication as “pure ignorance”:

QUESTION: “Mr. Ehrlich’s running mate, state GOP chairman Michael Steele, brings little to the team but the color of his skin.” Baltimore Sun. … What was your reaction when you read that?

STEELE: Ignorant. It was just pure ignorance. It’s something I had to put up with countless times. … But it was, again, showing a high level of ignorance — ignorance and racism. And call it for what it is. The Baltimore Sun is the Baltimore Sun. I don’t deal with the newspaper. I have nothing to say to the editorial board or –- I barely speak to its reporters, because this is a newspaper that, in my view, has some issues it needs to work out with respect to race.

Earlier this month, also while hosting Bill Bennett’s show, Steele agreed with a caller who declared that Obama “is the Magic Negro.” “Yeah,” Steele replied, laughing. “You read that too, huh?”
UpdateCiting ThinkProgress's post, Politico's Ben Smith writes:

What happens on Fridays: Michael Steele guest hosts Bill Bennett's radio show; young staffers at Media Matters and the Center for American Progress listen and compete for the most entertaining sound byte.

Ben Smith is wrong. Not to speak ill of the fine researchers at Media Matters, but reporting interesting nuggets from Steele's guest hostings on Bennett has been the exclusive domain of ThinkProgress.

This is Mr. Steele...@he might be envious with Obama..so he was ranting too much

America's Dirtiest and Cleanest Cities

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

America's Dirtiest and Cleanest Cities

by Richard Florida

The American Lung Association's State of the Air report on America's most polluted cities is out. Here's a summary (pointer via Planetizen).

Six out of ten Americans live in urban areas where air pollution can cause major health problems ... Despite America's growing "green" movement, the air in many cities became dirtier during the past 12 months. The research names Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Bakersfield as the most polluted US cities. The report finds that air pollution hovers at unhealthy levels in almost every major city, threatening people's ability to breathe and placing lives at risk ...

Many cities, like Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Charlotte, Philadelphia, Washington, DC and Baltimore have made considerable improvements in their air quality over the past decade. People living in some of these cities however, are breathing even dirtier air than what was reported in the Lung Association's previous report. Only one city, Fargo, North Dakota, ranked among the cleanest in all three air pollution categories covered by the research.

http://www.stateoftheair.org/2009/city-rankings/polluted-cities-ozone.html
http://www.stateoftheair.org/2009/city-rankings/cleanest-cities-ozone.html
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/05/americas-dirtiest-and-cleanest-cities.html

Death with Dignity Act ???

Wash. state woman 1st death under new suicide law - Yahoo! News

OLYMPIA, Wash. – Linda Fleming was diagnosed with terminal cancer and feared her last days would be filled with pain and ever-stronger doses of medication that would erode her mind.

The 66-year-old woman with late-stage pancreatic cancer wanted to be clear-headed at death, so she became the first person to kill herself under Washington state's new assisted suicide law, known as "death with dignity."

"I am a very spiritual person, and it was very important to me to be conscious, clear-minded and alert at the time of my death," Fleming said in a statement released Friday. "The powerful pain medications were making it difficult to maintain the state of mind I wanted to have at my death. And I knew I would have to increase them."

With family members, her physician and her dog at her side, Fleming took a deadly dose of prescription barbiturates and died Thursday night at her home in Sequim, Wash.

Chris Carlson, who campaigned against the new law with the Coalition Against Assisted Suicide, called the death unfortunate.

"Any premature death is a sad occasion and it diminishes us all," he said.

Compassion & Choices of Washington, an advocacy group that aids people who seek to use the law, announced her death.

Last November, Washington became the second state to have a voter-approved assisted suicide law. It is based on a law adopted by Oregon voters in 1997. Since then, about 400 people have used the Oregon law to end their lives.

In December, a district judge in Montana ruled that doctor-assisted suicides are legal in that state. That decision, based on an individual lawsuit rather than a state law or voter initiative, is before the Montana Supreme Court.

Doctors in Montana are allowed to write prescriptions for life-ending drugs pending the appeal. But it's unknown whether any actually have because there's no reporting process in place.

Under the Washington law, any patient requesting fatal medication must be at least 18, declared mentally competent and be a resident of the state.

Additionally, two doctors must certify that the patient has a terminal condition and six months or less to live, and the patient must make two oral requests 15 days apart, plus a written request that is witnessed by two people. Patients must also administer the drugs themselves.

Under the Washington measure, as in Oregon, doctors and pharmacists are not required to write or fill lethal prescriptions if they oppose the law. Some hospitals have opted out, which precludes their doctors from participating on hospital property.

___

Will Guantanamo Detainees Go To Colorado?

Will Guantanamo Detainees Go To Colorado? : NPR

A possible relocation site in the U.S. for Guantanamo detainees is the "Supermax" penitentiary in Florence, Colo. Bob Wood, publisher of the Florence Citizen tells Melissa Block how the community feels about the prospects.

America's Dirtiest and Cleanest Cities

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

America's Dirtiest and Cleanest Cities

by Richard Florida

The American Lung Association's State of the Air report on America's most polluted cities is out. Here's a summary (pointer via Planetizen).

Six out of ten Americans live in urban areas where air pollution can cause major health problems ... Despite America's growing "green" movement, the air in many cities became dirtier during the past 12 months. The research names Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Bakersfield as the most polluted US cities. The report finds that air pollution hovers at unhealthy levels in almost every major city, threatening people's ability to breathe and placing lives at risk ...

Many cities, like Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Charlotte, Philadelphia, Washington, DC and Baltimore have made considerable improvements in their air quality over the past decade. People living in some of these cities however, are breathing even dirtier air than what was reported in the Lung Association's previous report. Only one city, Fargo, North Dakota, ranked among the cleanest in all three air pollution categories covered by the research.

http://www.stateoftheair.org/2009/city-rankings/polluted-cities-ozone.html
http://www.stateoftheair.org/2009/city-rankings/cleanest-cities-ozone.html
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/05/americas-dirtiest-and-cleanest-cities.html

America's Dirtiest and Cleanest Cities

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

America's Dirtiest and Cleanest Cities

by Richard Florida

The American Lung Association's State of the Air report on America's most polluted cities is out. Here's a summary (pointer via Planetizen).

Six out of ten Americans live in urban areas where air pollution can cause major health problems ... Despite America's growing "green" movement, the air in many cities became dirtier during the past 12 months. The research names Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Bakersfield as the most polluted US cities. The report finds that air pollution hovers at unhealthy levels in almost every major city, threatening people's ability to breathe and placing lives at risk ...

Many cities, like Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Charlotte, Philadelphia, Washington, DC and Baltimore have made considerable improvements in their air quality over the past decade. People living in some of these cities however, are breathing even dirtier air than what was reported in the Lung Association's previous report. Only one city, Fargo, North Dakota, ranked among the cleanest in all three air pollution categories covered by the research.

http://www.stateoftheair.org/2009/city-rankings/polluted-cities-ozone.html
http://www.stateoftheair.org/2009/city-rankings/cleanest-cities-ozone.html
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/05/americas-dirtiest-and-cleanest-cities.html

Jaipongan

Traditional Indonesian folk dance deemed 'too erotic'

Traditional folk dance deemed 'too erotic'
Jaipongan dancers cheers for their colleagues during a festival in Bandung on February 22, 2009. Click for more photos

Jaipongan dancers cheers for their colleagues during a festival in Bandung on February 22, 2009. Photo: AFP

* Jaipongan dancers cheers for their colleagues during a festival in Bandung on February 22, 2009.
* The traditional West Java jaipong dance was the first to taste the whip of the controversial anti-porn law passed in December after officials recently criticised it as being too erotic and had seedy origins.
* West Java governor Ahmad Heryawan reportedly told the dancers to lessen their provocative moves and not let their underarms show, raising the ire of hundreds of dance groups.
* In support, Islamic-based Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) Tifatul Sembiring said the dance had a shady past, further fanning the flames.
* A beautician applies make up to a
* Dancers perform
* A dancer performs
* Children practice

March 10, 2009

Gyrating her hips to traditional gamelan music on a makeshift village stage, Indonesian folk dancer Sri Wulandari ignores the leers and wolf whistles of the drunk men below as she plucks grimy rupiah notes from their outstretched hands.

Her nightly routines rage into the wee hours in villages across West Java province but the 30-year-old dancer said the excited punters respected the golden rule of "look but don't touch."

"The men say naughty things and ask me to marry them but I'm a professional dancer, not a prostitute. Dancing jaipong is not a dirty job," she said.

The jaipong dance is one of several Indonesian art forms in the sights of social and religious conservatives after parliament passed a controversial anti-porn law in December.

(Photos: The traditional Indonesian jaipong dance)

West Java Governor Ahmad Heryawan raised hackles when he warned dancers -- who perform mainly at official ceremonies and cultural festivals -- to tone down their provocative moves and hide their underarms to comply with the law.

But while artists, audiences and civil society groups are appalled at such comments, Islamic parties trying to boost their popularity ratings ahead of April general elections have championed the anti-porn campaign.

"The dance shouldn't be too erotic," said Tifatul Sembiring, a senior leader of the Islam-based Prosperous Justice Party.

"It's true that in the 80s the jaipong dancers danced on tables in seedy places. Even now you can see them wearing tight clothes dancing at roadside bars," he said.

"The worry is that once the anti-porn bill is fully implemented, the dance may be banned because it's too erotic."

Outraged and insulted, professional dance groups have called on Indonesians to teach the self-appointed guardians of morality a lesson at the ballot box come April.

"What are they talking about? The dancers are all covered up in long-sleeved traditional kebayas, not sexy tubes," said Mas Nanu Muda of the Jaipong Care Community, representing 20 dance groups.

"The dance is fast and energetic... If dancers limit their moves and do everything in slow-motion, wouldn't they appear lewd instead?" he asked, swivelling his hips in a slow, exaggerated manner to illustrate his point.

The West Java dancers are not alone in their battle against the anti-porn law.

From animist Papuan highlanders wanting to protect their right to wear "koteka" gourds on their penises, to Hindu Balinese opera dancers worried about their shoulder-showing outfits, and Christian Minahasa people from North Sulawesi fearing an intrusion of Islamic values -- many people across Indonesia's cultural and religious melting pot want the law scrapped.

Even the sultan of Yogyakarta has declared his opposition.

"The leader of our nation must be able to build tolerance between the citizens so they live side by side in peace. For me, this cannot be negotiated," Sultan Hamengkubuwono X, a candidate for presidential elections in July, told foreign journalists.

The anti-porn law was "the most terrible thing in the process of building our nation," he said.

The law criminalises all works and "bodily movements" including music and poetry that could be deemed obscene and capable of violating public morality, and offers heavy penalties.

The Constitutional Court threw out a petition against the law by the Minahasa people in February, but the ruling was based on a technicality and the Christian plaintiffs are expected to try again.

Wulandari said politicians should keep their noses out of art and repeal the law immediately.

"Just kill it. The jaipong dance reflects our culture and there's nothing pornographic about it," she said in the home of her choreographer in Bandung, south of Jakarta.

"I'm angry at officials who misuse the law to attack us and our art."

Created by Sundanese artist Gugum Gumbira in the 1960s, Jaipong is a mix of older forms of community folk dances and the Indonesian martial art of pencak silat.

To untrained eyes, it combines the graceful arm and hand movements of Thai classical dance with hip gyrations reminiscent of Turkish belly dancing. It is not meant to be sexy, and the dancer's full-length kebayas reveal little.

"It's a popular dance performed at prestigious events in hotels and malls. Even children are taking lessons," said Bandung tourism and culture chief Askary, who like many Indonesians uses only one name.

"Without shaking and gyrating, you can't call it jaipong. I don't consider it erotic, titillating or lustful. That's all in the mind. If people want to think of something as erotic, it will be erotic," he added.

Yusoff Hamdani, a teacher of Islamic studies, said jaipong was "a good form of exercise" for young girls -- including his five-year-old daughter.

"It's not just about understanding and preserving culture. My daughter used to be sick all the time but has become fitter after taking jaipong lessons," he said outside a school in Bandung.

"I don't know why anyone would view the dance so negatively."

AFP

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The War on Drugs

A Brief History of The War on Drugs - TIME

It's a war without a clear enemy. Anything waged against a shapeless, intangible noun can never truly be won — President Clinton's drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey said as much in 1996. And yet, within the past 40 years, the U.S. government has spent over $2.5 trillion dollars fighting the War on Drugs. Despite the ad campaigns, increased incarceration rates and a crackdown on smuggling, the number of illicit drug users in America has risen over the years and now sits at 19.9 million Americans. And a large portion of their supply makes its way into the country through Mexico.

The U.S. International Narcotics Control Strategy reports that 90% of cocaine, for example, reaches the United States through its southern border. Drug-related violence in Mexico has gotten so bad that it is now spilling over into states such as Arizona, which has suffered a rash of kidnappings and ransoms. (Arizona's 370-mile border with Mexico serves as the gateway for nearly half of all smuggled marijuana.) Texas' request for National Guard protection from Mexican drug crime prompted Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair to declare last week that the Mexican government had lost control of its own territory. President Felipe Calderón responded by pointing out that his nation shared a border with "the biggest consumer of drugs in the world and the largest supplier of weapons in the world." In an attempt to partly smooth over any feathers ruffled by the Blair-Calderón spat, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will travel to Mexico on Mar. 25 and 26. (See pictures of Mexico's drug wars.)

Although the U.S. government has battled drugs for decades — President Eisenhower assembled a 5-member Cabinet committee to "stamp out narcotic addiction" in 1954 — the term "War on Drugs" was not widely used until President Nixon created the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 1973 to announce "an all-out global war on the drug menace." While reports of widespread heroin use among soldiers in Vietnam sparked an intense outcry, but by 1975 attention had turned to Colombia's cocaine industry. When Colombian authorities seized 600 kilos of cocaine hidden in everything from shoeboxes to a dog cage containing a live dog, drug traffickers retaliated by killing 40 people in one weekend. Nicknamed the "Medellin Massacre" after the city at the center of Colombia's drug trade, the murders ignited years of raids, kidnappings, and assassinations (a 1985 Medellin cartel "hit list" even included names of U.S. businessmen, embassy members and journalists).

During a 1984 appearance at an Oakland, Calif. school, then-First Lady Nancy Reagan was asked by 10-year-old Angel Wiltz what to do if someone offered her drugs. "Just say no," replied Reagan. Within a year, 5,000 "Just Say No" clubs had formed around the country, with Soleli Moon Frye, (Punky Brewster) as honorary chairperson. The Los Angeles Police Department's 1983 Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) school lecture program, grew into a national phenomenon that, by 2003, cost $230 million and involved 50,000 police officers. Partnership for a Drug-Free America launched a similarly memorable campaign in 1987 with an abrasive television ad featuring a hot skillet, a raw egg, and the phrase, "This is your brain on drugs."

Catchy slogans are no match for chemical addictions, however, and study after study showed that programs such as D.A.R.E. — no matter how beloved — produced negligent results. And while the Bush administration's 2002 goal of reducing all illegal drug use by 25% led to unprecedented numbers of marijuana-related arrests, pot use only declined 6% (and the use of other drugs actually increased). Drug trends tend to wax and wane, and a dip in the use of one type of drug might lead to a rise in another, causing officials to play a never ending game of narcotic whack-a-mole.

As far as Mexican attempts to halt trafficking, a newly elected President Felipe Calderón declared open season on drug cartels just days after being sworn into office in 2006 when he sent 6,500 troops to quash a rash of execution-style killings between two rival drug gangs. The following year, Calderón's public security minister Genaro Garcia Luna removed 284 federal police commissioners — all suspected of corruption — and replaced them with a hand-selected group of officers who successfully arrested several drug kingpins. The gangs have responded with what seems to be an endless stream of violence; 5,300 people were killed in drug-related crimes in 2008 and over 1,000 have already died this year. (Read "Mexico's Cocaine Capital.")

In 2008, President Bush signed the Mérida Initiative, which would provide $1.4 billion to Mexico and other countries over three years to help combat drug smuggling and violence. So far, only $456 million has been approved and President Obama has not yet said whether he plans to follow through on the remaining billion dollars. But money or no money, the drugs keep coming, and they keep coming fast.

Read why Bolivia quit the war on drugs

The Grass-Roots Marijuana Wars

The Grass-Roots Marijuana Wars - TIME

Don Duncan says he is not a pot smoker. "I haven't in eight or nine years now," says Duncan, 37. "It wasn't the right thing for me." Which is ironic, since he spends most of his day around plenty of cannabis as part owner of a West Hollywood, Calif. dispensary of medical marijuana, a storefront operation where as many as 100 customers — Duncan is careful to call them patients — line up daily with letters from their doctors to procure products with names like L.A. Confidential and Purple Urkel.


Lately, however, Duncan directed more energy toward his role as California director of Americans for Safe Access, a group of merchants, doctors and patients that aims to make it easier to dispense and obtain marijuana for medical purposes. The organization's central mission: fighting U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration raids on dispensaries.

California is the largest of 12 states allowing marijuana for certain medical uses, but the federal government considers all marijuana illegal. The conflicting statutes have led to an uncomfortable existence for California's growing ranks of marijuana providers. "At any moment, the DEA can come kicking down the door," says Duncan.

That is just what happened on May 27 to Virgil Edward Grant III, 41, owner of six L.A.-area dispensaries. Grant and his wife Psyhra Monique Grant, 33, were charged with 41 counts, including, drug conspiracy and money laundering and aiding and abetting the distribution of marijuana near a school. Grant pleaded not guilty on June 2. An employee, Stanley Jerome Cole, 39, pleaded not guilty to charges of selling a pound of marijuana to an undercover agent from the back door of one dispensary.

Timothy J. Landrum, special agent in charge of the DEA in Los Angeles, called the suspects "nothing more than drug traffickers." Prosecutors say Cole sold marijuana to a motorist charged with gross vehicular manslaughter in connection with a December accident near Ventura, Calif. His truck hit a parked car on a highway shoulder, killing the driver and seriously injuring a California Highway Patrol officer. Police said the driver was under the influence of marijuana that he said he had purchased at a dispensary in Compton, where one of Grant's operations is located.

Even before the Grants' arrest, Duncan's group had stepped up its efforts to fight the DEA, securing letters from six California mayors to U.S. Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat from Michigan who is chair of the House Judiciary Committee, requesting that the DEA halt the raids. In an April letter, Conyers asked the DEA to explain its use of "paramilitary-style enforcement raids" against medical marijuana patients and suppliers in California. Duncan's group also backs a California state senate bill that would callon the federal government to respect the state's marijuana laws.

In fact, the day the Grants were arrested, Duncan was at L.A.'s city hall with a group of protesters delivering a petition to enlist the help of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (who has not taken a position on the issue). When they learned that DEA agents were at one of Grant's dispensaries, just a few blocks away, the group quickly moved to the dispensary, surrounding its entrance while the DEA agents were still inside. The bust proceeded as Los Angeles Police Department officers stood by, but also not interfering with the peaceful rally.

Duncan has been an activist for more than a decade, starting out by helping to gather signatures for the 1996 initiative that legalized marijuana for medical purposes. At first skeptical, the Texas-born son of a physician and a nurse was moved by meeting a Berkeley schoolteacher who used marijuana to cope with the pain of glaucoma. "I thought, 'this isn't somebody wanting to get high — this is real,'" recalls Duncan. "I want to help."

Four years ago, he moved to Los Angeles, helping to open a dispensary and working to recruit activists and local politicians to the cause. Now he does that from a small office just upstairs from his four-room dispensary, which sits next to a Tattoo parlor and around the corner from a Target store. Two beefy security guards watch the door and a smiling receptionist sits next to a case displaying bongs and other paraphernalia. Inside, patients examine samples in glass cases. Some day, Duncan says, this will be as normal as visiting Walgreens. For now, he's less focused on his inventory than on his group's efforts to supply activists with "raid kits" — protest signs, bullhorns, and sunscreen — so they can show up on a moment's notice to confront DEA agents. Says Duncan: "I predict we're going to have a very long summer."

why legalizing marijuana makes sense

Why Legalizing Marijuana Makes Sense - TIME

For the past several years, I've been harboring a fantasy, a last political crusade for the baby-boom generation. We, who started on the path of righteousness, marching for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam, need to find an appropriately high-minded approach to life's exit ramp. In this case, I mean the high-minded part literally. And so, a deal: give us drugs, after a certain age — say, 80 — all drugs, any drugs we want. In return, we will give you our driver's licenses. (I mean, can you imagine how terrifying a nation of decrepit, solipsistic 90-year-old boomers behind the wheel would be?) We'll let you proceed with your lives — much of which will be spent paying for our retirement, in any case — without having to hear us complain about our every ache and reflux. We'll be too busy exploring altered states of consciousness. I even have a slogan for the campaign: "Tune in, turn on, drop dead."

A fantasy, I suppose. But, beneath the furious roil of the economic crisis, a national conversation has quietly begun about the irrationality of our drug laws. It is going on in state legislatures, like New York's, where the draconian Rockefeller drug laws are up for review; in other states, from California to Massachusetts, various forms of marijuana decriminalization are being enacted. And it has reached the floor of Congress, where Senators Jim Webb and Arlen Specter have proposed a major prison-reform package, which would directly address drug-sentencing policy. (See pictures of stoner cinema.)

There are also more puckish signs of a zeitgeist shift. A few weeks ago, the White House decided to stage a forum in which the President would answer questions submitted by the public; 92,000 people responded — and most of them seemed obsessed with the legalization of marijuana. The two most popular questions about "green jobs and energy," for example, were about pot. The President dismissed the outpouring — appropriately, I guess — as online ballot-stuffing and dismissed the legalization question with a simple: "No." (Read "Can Marijuana Help Rescue California's Economy?")

This was a rare instance of Barack Obama reacting reflexively, without attempting to think creatively, about a serious policy question. He was, in fact, taking the traditional path of least resistance: an unexpected answer on marijuana would have launched a tabloid firestorm, diverting attention from the budget fight and all those bailouts. In fact, the default fate of any politician who publicly considers the legalization of marijuana is to be cast into the outer darkness. Such a person is assumed to be stoned all the time, unworthy of being taken seriously. Such a person would be lacerated by the assorted boozehounds and pill poppers of talk radio. The hypocrisy inherent in the American conversation about stimulants is staggering.

But there are big issues here, issues of economy and simple justice, especially on the sentencing side. As Webb pointed out in a cover story in Parade magazine, the U.S. is, by far, the most "criminal" country in the world, with 5% of the world's population and 25% of its prisoners. We spend $68 billion per year on corrections, and one-third of those being corrected are serving time for nonviolent drug crimes. We spend about $150 billion on policing and courts, and 47.5% of all drug arrests are marijuana-related. That is an awful lot of money, most of it nonfederal, that could be spent on better schools or infrastructure — or simply returned to the public. (See the top 10 ballot measures.)

At the same time, there is an enormous potential windfall in the taxation of marijuana. It is estimated that pot is the largest cash crop in California, with annual revenues approaching $14 billion. A 10% pot tax would yield $1.4 billion in California alone. And that's probably a fraction of the revenues that would be available — and of the economic impact, with thousands of new jobs in agriculture, packaging, marketing and advertising. A veritable marijuana economic-stimulus package! (Read "Is Pot Good For You?")

So why not do it? There are serious moral arguments, both secular and religious. There are those who believe — with some good reason — that the accretion of legalized vices is debilitating, that we are a less virtuous society since gambling spilled out from Las Vegas to "riverboats" and state lotteries across the country. There is a medical argument, though not a very convincing one: alcohol is more dangerous in a variety of ways, including the tendency of some drunks to get violent. One could argue that the abuse of McDonald's has a greater potential health-care cost than the abuse of marijuana. (Although it's true that with legalization, those two might not be unrelated.) Obviously, marijuana can be abused. But the costs of criminalization have proved to be enormous, perhaps unsustainable. Would legalization be any worse?

In any case, the drug-reform discussion comes just at the right moment. We boomers are getting older every day. You're not going to want us on the highways. Make us your best offer.

decriminalization of marijuana?

Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work? - TIME

Pop quiz: Which European country has the most liberal drug laws? (Hint: It's not the Netherlands.)


Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze–filled "coffee shops," Holland has never actually legalized cannabis — the Dutch simply don't enforce their laws against the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

At the recommendation of a national commission charged with addressing Portugal's drug problem, jail time was replaced with the offer of therapy. The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is more expensive than treatment — so why not give drug addicts health services instead? Under Portugal's new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail.

See the world's most influential people in the 2009 TIME 100.

The question is, does the new policy work? At the time, critics in the poor, socially conservative and largely Catholic nation said decriminalizing drug possession would open the country to "drug tourists" and exacerbate Portugal's drug problem; the country had some of the highest levels of hard-drug use in Europe. But the recently released results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggest otherwise.

The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."

Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal's drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.

The Cato paper reports that between 2001 and 2006 in Portugal, rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug among seventh through ninth graders fell from 14.1% to 10.6%; drug use in older teens also declined. Lifetime heroin use among 16-to-18-year-olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8% (although there was a slight increase in marijuana use in that age group). New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003, and deaths related to heroin and similar drugs were cut by more than half. In addition, the number of people on methadone and buprenorphine treatment for drug addiction rose to 14,877 from 6,040, after decriminalization, and money saved on enforcement allowed for increased funding of drug-free treatment as well.

Portugal's case study is of some interest to lawmakers in the U.S., confronted now with the violent overflow of escalating drug gang wars in Mexico. The U.S. has long championed a hard-line drug policy, supporting only international agreements that enforce drug prohibition and imposing on its citizens some of the world's harshest penalties for drug possession and sales. Yet America has the highest rates of cocaine and marijuana use in the world, and while most of the E.U. (including Holland) has more liberal drug laws than the U.S., it also has less drug use.

"I think we can learn that we should stop being reflexively opposed when someone else does [decriminalize] and should take seriously the possibility that anti-user enforcement isn't having much influence on our drug consumption," says Mark Kleiman, author of the forthcoming When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment and director of the drug policy analysis program at UCLA. Kleiman does not consider Portugal a realistic model for the U.S., however, because of differences in size and culture between the two countries.

But there is a movement afoot in the U.S., in the legislatures of New York State, California and Massachusetts, to reconsider our overly punitive drug laws. Recently, Senators Jim Webb and Arlen Specter proposed that Congress create a national commission, not unlike Portugal's, to deal with prison reform and overhaul drug-sentencing policy. As Webb noted, the U.S. is home to 5% of the global population but 25% of its prisoners.

At the Cato Institute in early April, Greenwald contended that a major problem with most American drug policy debate is that it's based on "speculation and fear mongering," rather than empirical evidence on the effects of more lenient drug policies. In Portugal, the effect was to neutralize what had become the country's number one public health problem, he says.

"The impact in the life of families and our society is much lower than it was before decriminalization," says Joao Castel-Branco Goulao, Portugual's "drug czar" and president of the Institute on Drugs and Drug Addiction, adding that police are now able to re-focus on tracking much higher level dealers and larger quantities of drugs.

Peter Reuter, a professor of criminology and public policy at the University of Maryland, like Kleiman, is skeptical. He conceded in a presentation at the Cato Institute that "it's fair to say that decriminalization in Portugal has met its central goal. Drug use did not rise." However, he notes that Portugal is a small country and that the cyclical nature of drug epidemics — which tends to occur no matter what policies are in place — may account for the declines in heroin use and deaths.

The Cato report's author, Greenwald, hews to the first point: that the data shows that decriminalization does not result in increased drug use. Since that is what concerns the public and policymakers most about decriminalization, he says, "that is the central concession that will transform the debate."

See pictures of Culiacan, the home of Mexico's drug-trafficking industry.

Mom in Chief

The Meaning of Michelle Obama - TIME

It was just two days after the Inauguration when an e-mail went around to Michelle Obama's staff, instructing everyone to be in the East Room of the White House at 3 that afternoon. The First Lady's advisers arrived to find the room filled with ushers and plumbers, electricians and maids and kitchen crew gathered in a huge circle, and Michelle in a T shirt and ponytail, very casual and very much in charge.


"This is my team that came with me from Chicago," Michelle said, pointing to her communications staff and policy people. "This is my team who works here already," she went on, indicating the ring of veterans around the room. Many of the household staff had served for decades; some had postponed retirement because they wanted to serve an African-American President. And so the two groups formed concentric rings and spent the next hour or so making sure that everyone had a chance to meet everyone else. I want you to know that you won't be judged based on whether they know your name, Michelle had warned her advisers. You'll be judged based on whether you know theirs. (See pictures of Michelle Obama behind the scenes.)

The White House became as much Michelle Obama's stage as her husband's even before she colored the fountains green for St. Patrick's Day, or mixed the Truman china with the World's Fair glasses at a state dinner, or installed beehives on the South Lawn, or turned the East Room into a jazz lounge for a night or sacrificed her first sock to the First Puppy. Of all the revelations of her first 100 days, the most striking was that she made it seem natural. She did not spend decades dreaming of this destination, and maybe that's the secret. "I'm not supposed to be here," she says again and again. And ever since she arrived, she has been asking, "What are the things that we can do differently here, the things that have never been done, the people who've never seen or experienced this White House?"

Three generations, two adorable girls and a dog — no First Family has lived with the weight of hope and hype that has landed on the Obamas. Clothes they wear fly off the shelves. Dog breeders from Germany to Australia couldn't keep up with the demand for Portuguese water dogs after Bo debuted. Michelle is the first First Lady to make Maxim's hottest-women-in-the-world list. (She's No. 93; it probably wouldn't be proper for a First Lady to come in any higher.) Cameras with lenses that can count her pores from three states away are trained on her around the clock. Former East Wing veterans marvel at the lovesick coverage she gets: when Oscar de la Renta questions her fashion sense — "You don't ... go to Buckingham Palace in a sweater" — the response is, essentially, Well, what does he know? This is what a paradigm shift looks like. (See pictures of Michelle Obama's fashion diplomacy.)

The question now is what she plans to do with all this attention. We ask the usual questions of any new First Lady: What is she really like? How does she see her role? But it is only of Michelle Obama that we ask, What does she mean? Few First Ladies have embedded themselves so quickly in the world's imagination. And none have traveled so far, not just from Chicago's South Side to the East Wing, but from the caricatured Angry Black Woman of last spring to her exalted status as a New American Icon, as if her arrival will magically reverse eight years of anti-American spitballing, elevate the black middle class, promote family values, give voice to the voiceless and inspire us all to live healthier, more generous lives.

She admits that the sheer symbolic power of the role is perhaps greater than she anticipated. "I tried not to come into this with too many expectations one way or the other," she says on a sunny May afternoon in her East Wing office. "I felt like part of my job — and I still feel like that — is to be open to where this needs to go." She's always shown a shrewd eye for the strategic detour, suspending her career in favor of helping her husband get elected, then getting her daughters settled and her garden planted and, in the process, disarming the critics who cast her as a black radical in a designer dress. She will say she's just doing what comes naturally. But whether by accident or design, or a little of both, she has arrived at a place where her very power is magnified by her apparent lack of interest in it. "Over the years, the role of First Lady has been perceived as largely symbolic," Hillary Clinton observed in her memoirs. "She is expected to represent an ideal — and largely mythical — concept of American womanhood." That was not Clinton's favorite part of the job. Maybe this is Michelle's true advantage: she appears at peace, even relieved, that her power is symbolic rather than institutional. It makes her less threatening, and more potent at the same time — especially since her presence at the White House has unique significance. (See pictures of when Michelle met Hillary.)

The great-great-granddaughter of slaves now occupies a house built by them, one of the most professionally accomplished First Ladies ever cheerfully chooses to call herself Mom in Chief, and the South Side girl whose motivation often came from defying people who tried to stop her now gets to write her own set of rules.

Read TIME's complete interview with the First Lady.

The Truth About Women, Money and Relationships

Why are so many women reluctant to talk openly about the role money plays in their lives and relationships? Hilary Black, a veteran magazine editor (More, Tango) was determined to find out. The result is her compelling new anthology, The Secret Currency of Love: The Unabashed Truth About Women, Money, and Relationships (William Morrow). In it, a number of prominent female writers (including Julia Glass, Laurie Abraham and Joni Evans) spill the beans about money in their own lives. Black spoke by phone from her home in New York City to TIME senior reporter Andrea Sachs.

Why this particular book?

One thing I noticed over the many years I worked at More was that although people often wrote about divorce and Botox and sex, they didn't really talk about money in a way that was as profound or exploratory. And then I was kind of pushed over the edge when a relationship of mine ended. I was involved with a very wealthy man, and I was in my early 30s. I was surprised, when we broke up, at the reaction of my friends. I broke up with him. My friends, who were all independent, employed, sophisticated women, were not particularly supportive. Not across the board, but they were all kind of like, "He treats you so well, and he's so rich. What are you doing?" It was just amazing to see these very sophisticated, independent women kind of reduced to something out of a Jane Austen novel. (See pictures of Those Things Money Can Buy.)

Why do you think this subject is so taboo?

I think it is because money is so wrapped up in self-worth for a lot of people, and self-esteem. The tradition of not talking about money and not talking about your salary is something that has been long-standing over the past 40 years. I think that it's private because people feel that they don't want to reveal that personal part of themselves. For a lot of people it's wrapped up in how successful they are as a person. It is a very powerful force in intimate relationships, because whether you have a lot of money or a little money, it's always there. You don't ever escape its power.

I was very surprised in reading your book how many women — some of them self-identified feminists, some of them professionals — have the fantasy that some man is going to rescue them financially.

It seems like there's a pattern of ambivalence because so many women were raised with this idea that they could either be an astronaut or a ballet dancer or a mom; whereas I think that men were never sent a conflicting message. So I think that women [who] grew up as the children of baby boomers — certainly, from that generation on — felt they had a lot of options, and one of the options was not to work. I think that's why so many women who wanted to make their own way in the world and did so very successfully are kind of caught up in this conflict and this ambivalence about who earns the money.

There are women in your book who married for love and thereby entered poverty and later said that they hadn't really dealt realistically with their futures.

For many, many centuries, marriage was a financial transaction. And then, in the modern era, where marriage became about falling in love and free love and finding your soul mate, people were looking for that without asking some of the most important questions, which is what drives a long-term partnership. I think having similar financial values is crucial. It doesn't matter if you are a profligate spender or an industrious saver. You both have to be the same about it.

Do you think it's difficult for people to be financially compatible in that way?

No. I just think it takes a certain amount of planning. Money is crucial in the way that everyone lives their lives. It can be as simple as going out to dinner. Some people think that is a luxury, and other people think that it's a necessity. I think that things like that should come up and do come up early on. I think that something that simple can signal a whole lot about the way people value their money and what they do with it.

Did you find writers who married for money?

Not anybody who was willing to go on the table with that. I think that is actually the ultimate taboo. I think that it happens all the time, but it's something that nobody would ever admit to publicly.

What advice would you give people, based on what you learned?

What I hope people will take away from this is the idea that money issues are inescapable and that by reading these stories, people will see themselves — aspects of themselves, ambivalence about money, anger about money, how it changes things between people. And I feel that reading these stories will help people navigate their own issues, which I think will be exacerbated by what's going on in the economy right now.

How do you suppose the recession will affect women's thinking about money?

I think it's going to have an enormous impact. I think that what's going on now is so serious, and I think it hasn't even remotely begun to play out yet. I think that without a second Depression, these issues are powerful and can really transform people's relationships. But I think now, when people's lifestyles and very careers are being threatened, all of these things are going to be in the forefront and wield an even stronger influence. So I'm hoping that this book will help women figure out their own circumstances and make them feel that they're not alone and see the different ways that money can impact people's relationships — and hopefully take some of the lessons away that each of these writers have told. (See Sanjay Gupta's article on The Heart of a Woman.

Michelle Obama

Interview with the First Lady - TIME

Mrs. Obama: Welcome. Thanks for taking the time to come.

TIME: Well, thanks for making time.

This is a good day. It's pretty outside, a little sun.

So, I've been following your events, I've been talking extensively with your staff. One of the things I wanted to get at actually goes back to something you said on Tuesday night at the poetry jam. You said it's one thing for people to be speaking in their own spaces. It means something different ... I'm paraphrasing ... but it means something different for them to be speaking in this space. I wonder if you could elaborate on it. What is the meaning of being able to bring these new different voices?
I kind of think back to my childhood, and I tell this story a lot. I mean, I grew up in Chicago on the South Side, and literally a 10-minute drive away was the University of Chicago in all of its grandeur. And I never knew anything about that institution that was a few minutes away from me, and that was so telling, even to the point that my mother worked there. She worked there for four years as a secretary to the legal office. But I never set foot on campus. We came through, we picked her up, we left. It was sort of like another world that didn't belong to me. I didn't think about college in that sense when I was younger. So it was a very foreign place even though it was a stone's throw. It had an impact on my life. (Watch TIME's video "Election Day in Chicago's South Side.")

And there are so many institutions like that around the world, and so many kids like that who are living inches away from power and prestige and fame and fortune, and they don't even know that it exists. And the White House, all these wonderful buildings, these monuments and capitols ... I'm sure there are children who feel that way. I'm sure there are people in this country who feel the same way about these places that I did about the University of Chicago.

And I have probably dedicated more of my life to trying to break down those barriers for people. I think that might be one of the small themes in my professional life, is to try to be the bridge so that more people feel like they have access; that their voice, that their faces, that their worlds count in places like this, and that there is understanding across those divides.

And as I grew up and came to work in those places, right, and got to know them, I realized that the misunderstanding or the disconnect goes both ways; that folks outside of these communities have no idea what goes on within these institutions, and sometimes the people in the institutions have no real understanding of the people who live outside. You know, everybody is dealing in these misperceptions about one another because there is no bridge.

And I just feel like through the small things that we can do here at the White House, we can start exemplifying the importance of building those bridges, in real meaningful ways, so that when you come ... when young people come here, they don't have to come here and be something they're not; they can come here and be who they are, and the folks here will listen. And we can go out and be ourselves and listen in their communities, as well.

Well, you know, that makes me wonder, because you've said so many times, especially to groups of kids, "I'm not supposed to be here." It makes me wonder whether in the last couple of months, maybe you've thought, "Maybe I am supposed to be here." (Laughter.)
You know, I don't know if I have thought that deeply about it, but I think that now that I'm here, there's a whole lot that hopefully I can bring to being here, because of, you know, the differences in the way that I've grown up, the different perspectives that I bring.

And I think that Barack and I and ... you know, I think all of our staff, they're just trying to think about what are the things that we can do differently here, the things that have never been done, the people who've never seen or experienced this White House. How do we make that possible for them?

Well, that day that you started in Anacostia and then ended up with all these amazing women and girls, can you talk a little bit about that day and what it meant to you and what you think it meant to them?
Yes, I think it's a part of this theme. You know, I had this vision when ... as we were going through the campaign and you started thinking about, okay, what if my husband wins and I'm the First Lady, what are the kind of things that I'd like to do? And you always get that question ... or, I got that question a lot over the course of the campaign. But one of the things that I thought was, well, how powerful would it be for young girls to come into this space and hear from other really powerful, impressive, dynamic women, and to have that conversation go on here in the White House?

And as we sort of started thinking through the event and thinking about how I wanted to relate to the D.C. community, as well, I always thought whenever we invited somebody in, I wanted to go out to their space, too. I wanted that to be a mutual exchange; that it's not just people coming here where I live, but it's me going out to where they live.

So we've tried to do that in almost every event that we've done from, you know, the White House Kitchen Garden to whenever we go to a school and read to kids. Either their teachers or the kids will be invited back here very soon. That's sort of a theme. (See pictures of the White House kitchen.)

So the event started coming together. And it came off so beautifully. I think it was ... it's one of those events that stand out in my mind as, this is why I'm here ... to help make this possible and to see the faces on those girls as they entered the East Room in all its glory, and to be sitting around these tables with women they saw on TV, or saw on the news, and to have them having real conversations. Alicia Keyes, who's the idol of every single girl under 30, probably, when she came in, she literally walked around to every single table, because everybody is still a little sort of ... I'm in the White House, let me behave, I can't get up.

Spent: Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior

Sex Sells. Here's Why We Buy - TIME

Geoffrey Miller

The Gist:

That iPhone in your pocket? That's for sex. As is pretty much everything you've ever bought, from the car you drive to the t-shirt you wear — or so says evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller. From mating to marketing, Miller explores how everyday consumer choices subtly — and sometimes not so subtly — reveal society's misguided attempts at projecting four central traits (intelligence, conscientiousness, openness, agreeableness) to attract sexual partners.

Highlight Reel:

1. On the difficulty of explaining modern life to our prehistoric ancestors: "Compared with their easygoing clannish ways, our frenetic status seeking and product hunting would look bewildering indeed. Our society would seem noisy, perplexing and maybe psychotic ... All you have to do is sit in classrooms every day for sixteen years to learn counterintuitive skills, and then work and commute fifty hours a week for forty years in tedious jobs for amoral corporations, far away from relatives and friends, without any decent child care, sense of community, political empowerment, or contact with nature. Oh, and you'll have to take special medicines to avoid suicidal despair, and to avoid having more than two children. It's not so bad, really. The shoe swooshes are pretty cool."

2. On the biological concept of marketing: "Since about 1990, there have been two bloodless but momentous revolutions in human affairs: the collapse of Communism in politics, and the rise of signaling theory in biology. Both depended on the same insight: individuals work hard mostly because they want to show off to others, not for the good of the group. This tendency holds true in both organic evolution and human economics ... We've known since Darwin that animals are basically machines for survival and reproduction; now we also know that animals achieve much of their survival and reproductive success through self-advertisement, self-marketing, and self-promotion.

2. On the futility of consumer capitalism: "We take wondrously adaptive capacities for human self-display — language, intelligence, kindness, creativity, and beauty — and then forget how to use them in making friends, attracting mates, and gaining prestige. Instead we rely on goods and services acquired through education, work, and consumption to advertise our personal traits to others. These costly signals are mostly redundant or misleading, so others usually ignore them. They prefer to judge us through natural face-to-face interaction. We thinking our gilding dazzles them, though we ignore their own gilding when choosing our friends and mates."

The Lowdown:

Like Sigmund Freud, Miller sees sex everywhere; all our acquisitions of personal goods, according to Miller, are motivated by the primal desire for procreation or pleasure or both. Though he advocates abolishing income taxes in favor of a "consumption tax" and learning to buy secondhand, he isn't a utopian hippie radical either. "Unlike many malcontents," Miller writes, "I consider the three best inventions of all time to be money, markets, and media." But while Miller does his best to avoid sounding too academic (and has an ear for pulled-from-TMZ.com phrases like "insecure, praise-starved flattery-sluts"), his broad, rambling arguments read, at times, like a college professor's lecture notes. Worse still, his ideas don't seem particularly ground-breaking. "Consumerism is hard to describe when it's the ocean and we're the plankton," Miller argues in his defense. But still: Men buy Porsches to project power, women use eyeliner to look pretty and everybody seeks attention without realizing they're going about it all wrong? Sounds about right to me.

serendipity

Freedom of speech

Sent from my phone using trutap

Indonesian Imams Concerned About Facebook Flirting

Interest in Facebook is growing fast in Indonesia, a primarily Muslim country, and clerics there have become worried that participating in activities on the social network could lead to sinful behavior. A group of imams met to consider the problem, and reportedly may set some Facebook rules for their followers, which could set strick limits on their use of the site.


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Muslim clerics are seeking ways to regulate online behavior in Indonesia, saying the exploding popularity of social networking sites like Facebook More about Facebook could encourage illicit sex.

Around 700 clerics, or imams, gathering in the world's most populous Muslim nation on Thursday were considering guidelines forbidding their followers from going online to flirt or engage in practices they believe could encourage extramarital affairs.

Inside Facebook, an independent Palo Alto, Calif.-based blog dedicated to tracking the site, says Indonesia, a nation of 235 million, was the fastest-growing country in Southeast Asia for the site in 2008, with a 645 percent increase to 831,000 users.

It is already the most visited site in Indonesia, and with less than 0.5 percent of Indonesia's citizens wired, there is a huge potential for growth.

"The clerics think it is necessary to set an edict on virtual networking, because this online relationship could lead to lust, which is forbidden in Islam," said Nabil Haroen, a spokesperson for the Lirboyo Islamic boarding school, which was hosting the event.
Fear of Facebook Fatwa
Though followers could still be members of the networking site, guidelines dealing with surfing the Web and Islamic values are urgently needed, he said.

"People are typically using Facebook to connect with their friends, family or learn about local and world issues and events," said Debbie Frost, a Facebook spokesperson. "We have seen many people and organizations use Facebook to advance a positive agenda."

Ninety percent of Indonesians are Muslim, and most practice a moderate form of the faith.

An edict by the clerics would not have any legal weight, but it could be endorsed by the influential Ulema Council, which recently issued rulings against smoking and yoga.

Some devout Muslims adhere to the council's rulings because ignoring a fatwa, or religious decree, is considered a sin.

Amidan, who heads the Ulema Council, said the growing number of Facebook users in Indonesia was a controversial subject among Muslim leaders and that he favored a ban because of possible sexual content.
Driven to Pornography?
"People using Facebook can be driven to engage in distasteful, pornographic chatting," said Amidan, who was monitoring the two-day conference in the town of Kediri, in eastern Java More about Java.

Many clerics are concerned that "inappropriate content" on Facebook could be accessed by children, said Amidan, who like many Indonesians goes by a single name.

Facebook is the top ranked site in Indonesia, ahead of search engines Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) More about Yahoo and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) More about Google, according Alexa.com, which tracks Internet traffic.

Nearly 4 percent of all Facebook visitors are from Indonesia, making it the largest source of visitors after the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Italy.

© 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

a neo-lib

PM's hero a neo-lib | The Australian

WHEN Kevin Rudd published his lengthy essay on the global financial crisis, it was not only an attempt to strengthen his reputation as Australia's philosopher Prime Minister but also to mark the day of reckoning for neo-liberalism. "Neo-liberalism has been revealed as little more than personal greed dressed up as an economic philosophy," he wrote. Despite this stark rhetoric, Rudd's essay revealed only one thing: neo-liberalism is one of the most sloppily used words in today's political debates. The original philosophy of neo-liberalism, of which Rudd seems unaware, was anti-capitalist and the opposite of a laissez-faire free-for-all.

The term neo-liberalism was invented at the time of the Depression in the 1930s. The belief in eternal prosperity had been shattered by Wall Street's Black Friday and the events that followed. Liberalism and capitalism were blamed for the global economic crisis. Across the world, economists such as John Maynard Keynes and politicians such as US president Franklin D. Roosevelt were looking for alternatives to a system that they thought had failed spectacularly.

In Germany, too, the mood had turned against unfettered capitalism. However, not everybody believed this had to mean a complete departure from a market-based economy. Young German economist and sociologist Alexander Rustow certainly did not. In a speech he delivered in 1932, regarded as one of the founding documents of neo-liberalism, he called for a "third way" between socialism and capitalism. Rustow's speech was titled Free Economy, Strong State and in these four words he summed up the core of the neo-liberal project.

He rejected markets left to their own devices. Such markets, he was convinced, would always degenerate. "We agree with Marxists and socialists in the conviction that capitalism is untenable and needs to be overcome," Rustow wrote in a later essay.

If laissez faire and Adam Smith-style liberalism were so bad, according to Rustow, would he then have preferred a planned economy? His answer was a resounding no. With the same rhetorical verve he used to condemn capitalism, he equally rejected the promises of socialism and communism. They were not viable economic systems and were incompatible with democracy, freedom and human dignity.

This led Rustow to call for a middle way: between laissez faire and socialism, his third way. "We should be happy that we do not have to make a difficult choice between capitalism and communism, but that there is a third way," he wrote. Ironically, it is the same logic that makes today's critics of neo-liberalism claim that one no longer has to choose between Friedrich Hayek and Leonid Brezhnev, as Rudd expressed it last year.

Although contemporary supporters of a third way claim to be fighting neo-liberalism, to Rustow this same third way was neo-liberalism. He called it neo-liberalism to differentiate it from earlier liberalism, for which Rustow frequently used derogatory terms such as "vulgar liberalism". Rustow wanted to break with this old liberal tradition to put a new liberalism in its place, hence the prefix neo. It was the philosophy for the state setting and policing a regulatory framework without actually planning the economy.

A group of German economists and lawyers continued to develop this neo-liberal philosophy in the '30s and '40s. Some of them, such as Rustow himself, left Nazi Germany to work in exile. Others such as Walter Eucken, a close friend of Rustow, remained in Germany, under constant threat.

Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer is well known to an Australian audience since Rudd named him "without doubt, the man I admire most in the history of the 20th century". It may be of some interest that Bonhoeffer, too, was connected to the German neo-liberal movement.

None other than Bonhoeffer commissioned the neo-liberal economists around Eucken to develop a concept for domestic and foreign policies in Germany after the end of National Socialism. When the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944, failed, parts of this memorandum were obtained by the Gestapo, and Bonhoeffer was executed for his involvement.

It may seem ironic that Rudd's most admired man in recent history had sympathies for neo-liberalism, when the same Rudd has subsequently denounced neo-liberalism as an empty philosophy. The philosophy of neo-liberalism was eventually implemented in West Germany's "social market economy". There it became the foundation of the country's rapid economic growth after the war, the so-called economic miracle.

Neo-liberalism is a far richer, more thoughtful concept than it is mostly perceived today. To those criticising neo-liberalism today, the answer may well be just that: we need more of this kind of neo-liberalism that sets a good framework for a free economy. What we would need less of is only the rhetorical abuse of neo-liberalism for political purposes.

Oliver Marc Hartwich is a research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. His essay Neoliberalism: The Genesis of a Political Swearword is published today.

University of Sydney posted a deficit

University of Sydney's losses 'threaten operations' | The Australian

NSW universities have been savaged by the global financial crisis, suffering a $500 million loss in the value of their investments, led by the University of Sydney, which recorded a staggering $347 million reversal to its bottom line.

Sydney University posted a surplus of $187 million in 2007, but its annual report shows the country's oldest and wealthiest university filed a $160 million deficit at the end of last year.

The reversal to the university's bottom line flowed from a 23 per cent or $271 million fall in the value of its $1.15 billion investment portfolio, one of the country's largest university-based pools of investments and bequests.

The results from the NSW universities' annual reports - tabled in parliament yesterday - dramatically revise upwards university investment losses previously projected to be about $800 million across universities nationwide.

NSW Auditor-General Peter Achterstraat said the global financial crisis and the volatility in financial markets had the potential to significantly affect universities' operations.

The auditor criticised Sydney University over failing to meet adequate liquidity performance guidelines, describing its position as "high risk".

The university may have to make borrowings to fund capital spending, defer or make significant changes to its capital works program, or even reduce discretionary spending on research grants, scholarships and prizes, the auditor's report said.

But Sydney University chief financial officer Mark Easson said despite the reduction in investment income, the university was in a strong financial position with annual revenue of $1.3 billion.

"We remain debt-free with a pool of discretionary funds available for contingencies. Our investment portfolio is well diversified and performed better than most similar sized balanced funds against which we benchmark," he said.

Mr Easson stressed that there would be no impact on the university's core teaching and research programs.

"Student demand remains high with increased enrolments this year from both local and international students," he said.

As recently reported in The Australian, the state's only other research-intensive university, University of NSW, also posted an $87.4 million deficit for 2008, well up from its $6.5 million deficit the previous year.
Story

Guess who? Mariah Carey in Precious....couldn't recognize her

Mariah Carey glam at Cannes, but dowdy in Precious | Movies | News.com.au

IT'S Mariah Carey as you've never seen her before.

The singing star who has refused to travel without an army of beauticians and once admitted sleeping with 20 humidifiers around her bed ditches the glamour for a movie role.

And the switch from diva to dowdy could be her best move yet, with the film, Precious, already winning critical acclaim.

The 40-year-old sports a scruffy hairdo and unflattering blouse to play a social worker in the movie.

Set in Harlem in 1987, Precious tells the story of an overweight, illiterate girl who becomes pregnant with her second child at the age of 16 after she is raped by her father.

Gabourey Sidibe plays the title role after director Lee Daniels discovered her on the streets of New York.

The film - adapted from Push: A Novel - premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January where it won the Audience Award and Grand Jury prize for best drama.

Phelps is back

Michael Phelps wanted to bring more attention to swimming.

He's sure doing that.

Phelps' accomplishments in the pool — and shaky judgment on dry land — has brought plenty of notoriety to what has always been a once-every-four-years sport.

On Thursday, he caught an early morning flight to Charlotte for his first meet since winning a record eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics. He'll be competing in front of capacity crowds and media from as far away as Japan, France and Britain — hardly the norm for a Grand Prix meet in a non-Olympic year.

"With the positive and the negative things, there's a lot more attention being brought to the sport," Phelps said at a news conference shortly after touching down in North Carolina. "That's something this sport needs and something it deserves."

Of course, he would've preferred the focus remain on his accomplishments in Beijing, not what he did during a party in right-down-the-road South Carolina three months after the Olympics. That's where someone took that infamous photo of Phelps inhaling from a marijuana pipe, a picture that wound up on the front page of a British tabloid and led USA Swimming to give him a three-month suspension.

Whether he likes it or not, Phelps has clearly crossed the threshold from superstar athlete to cultural icon. He's recognized everywhere he goes and become a fixture in the tabloids, though he insists nearly everything written about his life outside the pool — from supposed wild partying to an adventurous love life — is untrue.

"There are avenues on the Internet and other places where people can say anything they want to say and not have to back it up," said Bob Bowman, Phelps' longtime coach. "I'm just focused on the swimming, but we have learned some interesting things."

More than 80 members of the media crowded into a hastily erected tent to hear from Phelps, who arrived on a muggy day wearing a long-sleeve black shirt and gray slacks. He had the makings of a beard — or maybe he was going for a goatee.

He fielded serious questions from the BBC, the French newspaper L'Equipe and Japan's TV Asahi. He was good-natured when a hefty local radio host challenged him to race.

"You could probably take me right now," Phelps quipped, breaking into a big smile.

He's eager to get the focus back on his swimming, and the Charlotte Ultraswim will be his first chance to begin developing a new program for the London Olympics.

Phelps will swim two of the five individual events he won in Beijing, with particular attention being paid to the 100-meter freestyle and 100 backstroke. He has the ninth-fastest time ever in the 100 free, and only three swimmers have gone faster in the 100 back — world record holder Ryosuke Irie of Japan and fellow Americans Ryan Lochte and Aaron Peirsol.

Phelps will be looking for some extra speed in the 100 free, debuting a straight-arm stroke that should increase his speed but is more tiring than the traditional bent-at-the-elbow motion.

"We've actually been playing with it a lot on and off," Bowman said. "Only after the last Olympics did we decide it was something he can really commit to."

After that infamous photo came out, Phelps wasn't even sure if he wanted to keep swimming. He went into virtual seclusion for nearly a month, then woke up one weekend morning suddenly realizing that he wanted to keep going through the next Olympics.

"I was the only one who could make that decision," Phelps said. "It didn't matter how bad Bob wanted me to swim or my mom wanted me get back in the water. The only thing that mattered is how bad I wanted it, and to make sure I still wanted it."

Though he's unlikely to go for another eight golds at the next Olympics, even a scaled-back program likely will have him swimming six or seven times. He already is the winningest Olympian ever with 14 gold medals and could finish his career with an even 20 — a record that might be even tougher to take down that Mark Spitz's seven gold medals at a single Olympics, which stood for 36 years.

Then there's the times.

Phelps already holds the world record in four individual events, and he would surely like to add a couple more to his resume. Bowman said it was important to give Phelps a different set of challenges heading into what will be his final Olympics.

"It's kind of hard to say, 'OK, let's go break the record in the 400 (individual medley) for like the 10th time,'" Bowman said. "He needed something new."

In the meantime, everyone else is along for the ride.

"Hopefully, some of Michael's attention trickles down to us," said Mark Gangloff, a two-time gold medalist competing in Charlotte. "We all benefit from his popularity."

“scientific” Southern Ocean whaling programme and ecological destruction

  Aomori, Japan, May 15, 2009 -- The Aomori district court today

delivered a setback to the Japanese government’s attempts to cover up

an embezzlement scandal in the so-called “scientific” Southern Ocean

whaling programme. The court has agreed to hear key evidence the

prosecution has fought to keep out of the trial of Greenpeace

activists Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki.



Sato and Suzuki are being prosecuted, and risk up to ten years in jail

if convicted, after they exposed a major corruption scandal

surrounding the Japanese government-sponsored Southern Ocean whaling

programme. The two removed a box of embezzled whale meat from a mail

depot, and presented it to Japan’s Public Prosecutor to prove the

existence of corruption in the government-subsidised whaling

programme.



The prosecutor had tried to paint the actions of the defendants as a

simple case of theft, arguing that all evidence related to the

underlying embezzlement scandal should be ruled irrelevant. The court,

however, indicated that the evidence of embezzlement will have a place

in the trial.



“In this trial, we want to establish that what Junichi and Toru did

was to corroborate information provided by whistleblowers regarding

embezzlement within the Kyodo Senpaku whaling fleet,” said defence

lawyer Yuichi Kaido.



“With the prosecutor’s opinion being rejected by the court, we have

gained a foothold in this case and the opportunity to prove that there

was indeed embezzlement of whale meat by employees.”



Furthermore, the court also requested the disclosure of additional

evidence of embezzlement held by the prosecutor’s office that has not

yet been made public. This could possibly include key statements made

to police by employees of Kyodo Senpaku, the company contracted to

carry out the Southern Ocean whaling programme.



“The government was hoping to bury this scandal by putting the

messengers on trial,” said Jun Hoshikawa, Greenpeace Japan Executive

Director. “However, as more evidence of embezzlement comes to light,

at the end of the day it will be whaling that is on trial.”



Greenpeace is an independent, global campaigning organisation that

acts to change attitudes and behaviour, to protect and conserve the

environment, and to promote peace.



Contacts:

Greg McNevin - Greenpeace International Communications, +81 (0)80 5416

6506, greg.mcnevin@greenpeace.org

Kyoko Murakami - Greenpeace Japan Communications, +81 (0)3 5338 9816,

kyoko.murakami@greenpeace.org



Notes:

An investigation begun by Sato and Suzuki in April 2008 focused on

organised whale meat embezzlement conducted by whaling fleet crew from

Japan's so-called "scientific" whaling programme, which is funded by

Japanese taxpayers. Following information from an informer who had

previously been involved in the whaling programme, Sato and Suzuki

discovered firm evidence that cardboard boxes containing whale meat

were being secretly shipped to the homes of whaling fleet crew - and

then sold for personal profit. Junichi Sato delivered a box of this

whale meat to the Tokyo Prosecutors' Office in May 2008, and filed a

report of embezzlement. However, the embezzlement investigation was

dropped on 20 June - the same day that both men were arrested and then

held for 26 days before being charged with theft and trespass.

TLT

Time Line Therapy for Business?? | NLP into Action

issa kumalasari

Time Line Therapy™ dikembangkan oleh Dr.Tad James sejak tahun 1985 yang ditulis juga ditulis dalam buku nya yang berjudul “Time Line Therapy and The Basis of Personality “ tahun 1988 dimana sekarang ini sudah dikenal dan diakui di hampir seluruh belahan dunia. Teknik ini sebuah integrasi dari dua teknik; Neuro Linguistic Programming dan Ericsonian Hypnosis yang terbilang sebagai salah satu dari teknik dapat menghilangkan “Negative Emotions ,Limiting Decision and Andvance Goal setting yang dapat mengijinkan kita mendapatkan apa yang kita INGINKAN.

MENGHILANGKAN EMOSI NEGATIF

Teknik yang ampuh,cepat, mudah dan menyenagkan ini dapat menghilangkan emosi negative yang tidak Anda inginkan seperti ; reaksi marah yang berlebihan / temperamental.apatis, trauma, phobia disamping itu teknik ini juga di gunakan untuk memoercepat proses penyembuhan dan/atau “pain control”

MENGHILANGKAN “LIMITING DECISION/BELIEF

Hal – hal yang mencegah Anda mendapatkan apa yang Anda inginkan, apa itu ?

Pernahkah Anda menginginkan sesuatu , dan anda mendengar suara di dalam kepala atau hati anda :

” Saya tidak percaya saya bisa melakukannya ”

”Saya kurang bagus ,orang lain lebih bagus”,

”Saya tidak layak menduduki jabatan ini”

”Saya tidak PD”

Dan pertanyaan yang Anda ingin tanyakan apabila Anda menemukan hambatan ini dalam pikiran Anda.

Tanyakan pada diri Anda :

”Sejak kapan saya memutuskan untuk percaya …….x….( saya tidak percaya saya bisa.)”

Bagi sebagian dari Anda mungkin akan berkata ;

” Loh kok bisa ?! memang kenyataan nya saya tidak mampu kok”

”Kan memang lingkungan saya , atau mungkin bukan saya penyebabnya ”

INGAT ! Tujuan dari Time Line Therapy™ adalah hidup lebih baik, sehat , dan mendapatkan apa yang anda INGINKAN

Pertanyaan di atas mungkin belum biasa kita tanyakan pada diri kita sendiri bukan ? tapi apa salah nya jika itu akan membuat PERUBAHAN yang signifikan dalam kehidupan kita.

Saya memaksudkan apabila hal – hal di atas dapat menghambat bahkan mencegah nda mendapatkan apa yang anda INGINKAN.

Jika Anda dapat menghilangkan Emosi negatif & ”Limiting Decison / Limiting Belief dengan dengan proses yang cepat , mudah dan hasil yang ”long lasting”.

Apakah teknik dapat bermanfaat untuk Anda?

Menemukan Time Line

Siapakah kita sekarang , kalau bukan sebuah koleksi dari memori – memori, yang juga terekam berumur umur kemudian juga berpengaruh pada bagaimana kita bertindak terhadap sesuatu.

Time Line adalah sebuah katalog atau directory untuk meng”encode” pikiran bawah sadar (pbs) dan kebanyakan semua terjadi secara tidak sadar pula. Sekarang coba pikir,

Anda bangun di pagi hari yang segar, sinar matari yang hangat menyinap masuk di sela – sela korden kamar tidur Anda dan… Coba ingat siapakah NAMA Anda ? Yes! Yang jelas kita tahu persis pada saat kita bangun kita tahu bahwa SAYA adalah SAYA.

Bisa di bayangkan kalau pikiran bawah sadar kita tidak mengelola memori kita, mungkin kita tidak akan lupa nama kita setiap bangun pagi,heemmm apa jadinya.

Sekarang ,katakan no telpon rumah Anda sendiri dalam hati ,sebelum Anda berpikir untuk mengatakannya dalam hati, dimana nomor – nomor itu di simpan ? yang pasti ada di suatu tempat bukan ?

Pikiran bawah sadar adalah bagian dari pikran kita yang kita tidak secara sadar menyadarinya yang merupakan bagian yang penting dalam diri Anda. Bayangkan sejenak ; siapa yang menjalankan tugas untuk mengedipkan mata, memacu denyut jantung, memproses makanan di dalam perut. Dan banyak hal yang mungkin tak terpikirkan oleh kita.

Penghargaan terhadap pbs ,bahwa pbs adalah sumber untuk setiap PEMBELAJARAN, PERUBAHAN dan PERILAKU

Saya yakin Anda pembaca percaya dengan Pikiran Bawah Sadar (PBS) , ya bukan ? Kalau Anda ti dak percaya pada PBS Anda, siapa lagi yang bisa Anda percaya ?

Bagaimana meng-elicit dan atau mengetahui time line Anda

1. Ingatlah sesuatu hal yang telah terjadi bulan lalu, setahun lalu , 2 tahun yang lalu, 3,4,5…10 tahun yang lalu.

Misalnya; kapan Anda membayar tagihan listrik bulan lalu ?

2. Nah pada saat Anda mengingat nya , dapatkah Anda sadari bahwa memori itu datang atau berasal dari dan menuju arah mana.

Anda mungkin akan merasa itu masa lalu datang dari sebelah kiri dan masa depan menuju ke kanan, dan bahkan saya ounya klien yang time line nya c

Saya percaya semua masa lalu saya datang datang dan berasal dari belakang kepala saya , dan masa depan kepala menuju ke depan. Ini sangat individual dan beragam ,saya mempunyai klien

3. Ulangi langkah 1 & 2 untuk 1 bulan ke depan ,1 tahun, 2,3…5 tahun ke depan atau 10 tahun ke depan

4. Sekarang gambarkan,dimanakah ”The Past” dan The Future ? yang apabila keduanya di hubungkan dapat membentuk sebuah garis (tidak selalu garis lurus , bisa berupa kurva, spiral ,dsb

5. Apabila Anda belum menemukan nya , ulangi langkah 1-4, dan yang penting bangunlah hubungan dengan pikiran bawah sadar Anda. Tanyakan pada PBS anda

Mungkin sebagian dari Anda berpikir dan berkata dalam hati ”Ah…saya tidak bisa ?”

Proses ini bukan proses konsep logika , Kita semua menghargai proses logis dan rasional

Timi line adalah cara bagaimana PBS kita memyimpan memori, tidak ada Time Line yang benar atau salah, baik ,lebih baik atau kurang baik. Ini hanya cara pbs menyimpan memori. Time Line Anda bisa berasal dari kiri ke kanan, atas ke bawah atau sebaliknya atau bahkan tidak membentuk garis lurus. Bagaimapun bentuk Time Line Anda, itu adalah yang terbaik untuk Anda

Tujuan dari latihan ini adalah untuk mengetahui Time Line Anda ,dan rasakan sendiri MANFAATNYA.

Gambar yangada di awal artikel ini merupakan kemungkinan dari bermacam – macam Time Line – ini adalah generalisasi, karena Time Line tidak selalu berbentuk garis lurus.

Tes Drive

Yes!!! Bagi Anda yang sudah menemukan dan tahu Time Line Anda., kita akan melakukan “Test Drive”

1. Sekarang juga saya ingin Anda mengambang naik ke atas time line Anda sehingga Anda ada di atas time line, dan naik lagi lebih tinggi , lebih tinggi, dan lebih tinggi lagi, setinggi nya sampai time line terlihat hanya 1 inch …..( dalam melakukan hal ini pastikan Anda merasakan benar – benar mengambang naik di atas time line

PERHATIAN !

Mengambang naik diatas Time Lime bukan berjalan di atau menyusuri Time Line.

2. Nah sekarang kembalikan seperti semula

3. Apa yang Anda rasakan ?

4. Sekarang Anda boleh pergi kembali ke masa lalu Anda ,Ingat Anda masih MENGAMBANG DIATAS tIme line Anda , ke mudian pergi ke masa depan setelah selesai Anda boleh kembali ke SEKARANG /posisi anda dan buka mata

5. SELAMAT , Anda sudah mengetahui Time Line Anda dan kita lanjutkan cara memanfaat kannya

Time Line dan Rasa Cemas

Saya juga akan berbagi mengenai bagaimana menggunakan Time Line Therapy ™untuk menghilangkan rasa was-was dan rasa cemas .

Rasa cemas – atau rasa was – was adalah sebuah dimana kita takut pada sesuatu yang sebernarnya belum terjadi. Kabar buruknya adalah perasaan ini kadanng dapat merusak “mood” atau kondisi kita , bukan.

Dan kabar baik nya adalah dengan Time Line Therapy™ dapat di hilangkan dengan hitungan menit .

Caranya ???

1. Temukan Time Line Anda ( Jika , belum ikuti langkah menemukan Time Line di atas )

2. Ambil satu peristiwa yang Anda cemas atau khawtirkan .cari apa sebanarnya yang anda cemaskan

3. Kemudian mengambang naik diatas Time Line dan pergi ke 15 menit SETELAH peristiwa yang Adana cemaskan TELAH terselesaikan dengan BERHASIL dan SUKSES

4. Setelah Anda Sampai disana Putar badan dan Anda menghadap dan lihat SEKARANG dan sepanjang Time Line Anda

5. Nah dinama rasa WAS – WAS atau cemas tersebut ? SUDAH HILANG?! Selamat , Anda sekarang tahu teknik yang mudah , ringan dan menyenagkan dan dapat di gunakan kapan saja Anda merasa khwatir.

6. Bagaimana dengan Anda yang rasa cemas nya masih belum hilang ULANGI Langkah 3 & 4, pastikan Anda mebayangkan peristiwa yang anda kwatirkan terselesaikan BERHASIL & SUKSES . Karena hal ini adalah kunci dari SUKSES nya latihan ini.

SELAMAT MERASAKAN MANFAAT Time Line Therapy™ - Teknik Ampuh,cepat mudah,menyenangkan dengan hasil yang ”long lasting”

Kita akan lanjutkan Bagaiman meng-aplikasikan Time Line Therapy™ dalam karir dan bisnis Anda.

parental leave in australia 544/week

Parental leave scheme gets thumbs up - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

The Federal Government is winning widespread support for its decision to include a paid parental leave scheme in Tuesday night's Budget.

The Government says the scheme will cost $260 million a year and will not require any private sector funding.

The scheme will be introduced from the start of 2011, but will be restricted to those people earning less than $150,000 a year.

Mothers who stay at home will still receive the baby bonus, but recipients of the paid parental leave will not be eligible for that payment or family tax benefit B.

The scheme will provide 18 weeks leave to be paid by the Government at the federal minimum wage, which is currently about $544 a week.

The Australian Industry Group's Heather Ridout says business has been pushing for such a scheme.

"It's a positive reform business and other groups have been as one about trying to move this agenda forward," she said.

"[It's] exactly the sort of scheme we were supporting. The fact that its introduction is delayed will give business time to prepare for it."

Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick is also pleased with the scheme.

"That's got to be good for mums, it's got to be good for babies and ultimately, it's got to be good for our country," she said.

She says it is vital businesses are educated about the scheme.

"It is important up to that start date that there is a lot of education so that business understands how this scheme's going to work, but I think today it's an important social reform," she said.

Delayed, but welcomed

ACTU president Sharan Burrow says even with the means testing and the delayed start, the scheme is a big win for parents.

"After 30 years I guess one more year is not going to make that big a difference," she said.

"I think Australian women will understand that it takes some time to set up the scheme, and secondly that we have got difficult economic circumstances."

Families Australia chief executive Brian Babbington says he would have preferred a scheme of at least 24 weeks, but believes what the Government is offering is a good start.

"The phasing in of this in 2011 is arguably a bit far in the distance," he said.

"We would have liked to have seen it introduced immediately but on balance, given the economic circumstances, there would be many who would say that's a reasonable thing."

Bike to school

With Free Bikes, Challenging Car Culture on Campus - NYTimes.com

BIDDEFORD, Me. — When Kylie Galliani started at the University of New England in August, she was given a key to her dorm, a class schedule and something more unusual: a $480 bicycle.
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The University of New England

Bicycles to be given to freshmen at the University of New England in Biddeford, Me.
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The University of New England

The University of New England bikes are personalized. Free or subsidized bike programs at colleges have had mixed success.
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“I was like, ‘A free bike, no catch?’ ” Ms. Galliani, 17, a freshman from Fort Bragg, Calif., asked. “It’s really an ideal way to get around the campus.”

University administrators and students nationwide are increasingly feeling that way too.

The University of New England and Ripon College in Wisconsin are giving free bikes to freshmen who promise to leave their cars at home. Other colleges are setting up free bike sharing or rental programs, and some universities are partnering with bike shops to offer discounts on purchases.

The goal, college and university officials said, is to ease critical shortages of parking and to change the car culture that clogs campus roadways and erodes the community feel that comes with walking or biking around campus.

“We’re seeing an explosion in bike activity,” said Julian Dautremont-Smith, associate director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, a nonprofit association of colleges and universities. “It seems like every week we hear about a new bike sharing or bike rental program.”

While many new bike programs are starting up, some are shutting down because of problems with theft and vandalism. The program at St. Mary’s College in Maryland was suspended because bikes were being vandalized.

“Ours was one that was totally based on voluntary taking care of the bike,” said Chip Jackson, a spokesman for St. Mary’s, “and I guess that was maybe a tad unwise. So the next generation of this idea will have a few more checks and balances.”

At Ripon, and the University of New England, officials say that giving students a bike of their own might encourage them to be more responsible. Ripon’s president, David C. Joyce, a competitive mountain biker, said the free bike idea came in a meeting about how to reduce cars on campus.

FED as a supercop?

AP Sources: Obama wants Fed to be finance supercop

WASHINGTON – The White House told industry officials on Friday that it is leaning toward recommending that the Federal Reserve become the supercop for "too big to fail" companies capable of causing another financial meltdown.

According to officials who attended a private one-hour meeting between President Barack Obama's economic advisers and representatives from about a dozen banks, hedge funds and other financial groups, the administration made it clear it was not inclined to divide the job among various regulators as has been suggested by industry and some federal regulators.

"The idea of having a council of regulators was pretty much vetoed," said one participant.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who briefly attended the meeting but did not identify the Fed specifically as his top choice, told the group that one organization needs to be held responsible for monitoring systemwide risk. He said such a regulator should be given better visibility into all institutions that pose a risk to the financial system, regardless of what business they are in.

"Committees don't make decisions," Geithner told the group, according to another participant.

Officials from the Treasury Department and National Economic Council, which hosted the meeting, told participants that the Fed was considered the most likely candidate for the job, according to several officials who attended or were briefed on the discussions.

The administration officials said a legislative proposal would likely be sent to Capitol Hill in June with the expectation that the House Financial Services Committee, led by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., would consider the measure before the July 4th recess.

The officials requested anonymity because the meeting had not been publicly announced and they were not authorized to discuss it.

A Treasury Department statement provided to The Associated Press on Friday confirmed Geithner's position that he wants a "single independent regulator with responsibility for systemically important firms and critical payment and settlement systems."

A spokesman said Geithner also is open to creating a council to "coordinate among the various regulators, including the systemic risk regulator."

Industry officials say such a council would likely serve as advisers and would not be given the authority that a "systemic risk regulator" would.

The Fed itself hasn't taken a position on whether it should have the job, although Chairman Ben Bernanke has said the Fed would have to be involved in any effort to identify and resolve systemwide risk.

Geithner said Friday the administration plans an "aggressive" package of reforms for the financial system including proposals to fundamentally overhaul how financial institutions pay their senior executives. Critics have charged that the bonus system used at many major institutions encouraged excessive risk taking.

"We had a financial system that did a terrible job of protecting consumers, of building a strong, stable financial system less prone to crisis and we are going to have to fix that," Geithner said in an interview on PBS' "Newshour." "You will see this president, this administration bringing sweeping reforms to our financial system."

In a speech Thursday, Bernanke said that huge, globally interconnected financial firms whose failure could endanger the U.S. economy should be subject to "a robust framework for consolidated supervision."

Naming the Fed as a kind of super regulator is likely to run into at least some resistance by other federal regulators and in Congress.

Mary Schapiro, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said Friday that she was inclined to support the idea floated this week by the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for a new "systemic risk council" to monitor large institutions against financial threats. The council would include the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, FDIC and SEC, according to the proposal by FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair.

Speaking to the Investment Company Institute, the mutual fund industry's biggest trade group, Schapiro said she is concerned about an "excessive concentration of power" over financial risk in a single agency.

Lawmakers are divided on whether the Fed alone should assume the role of systemic regulator. Some say the Fed failed to prevent the current economic crisis and shouldn't be trusted with such a big responsibility. Others say the Fed should stay focused on its primary duty of setting monetary policy.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said this week he is "more attracted to the council idea" than having a single regulator play that role.

Unlike other regulatory agencies, the Fed does not rely on appropriations from Congress for its operating funds. It finances itself through its investments.

Fed Gov. Daniel Tarullo told Congress in March that the extent to which the new responsibility for systemic risk should fall to the central bank "depends a great deal on precisely how the Congress defines the role and responsibilities of the authority."

"Any systemic risk authority would need a sophisticated, comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach to systemic risk," he testified. "Such an authority likely would require knowledge and experience across a wide range of financial institutions and markets."

Medicare: A new sliding scale for the private health insurance rebate will cut out at $120,000 for singles

Rudd Government will end the private health insurance rebate | Federal Budget 2009 | News.com.au

Rudd Government will end the private health insurance rebate



A new sliding scale for the private health insurance rebate will cut out at $120,000 for singles/ File.

* Government to end rebate from next July
* Sliding scale for health insurance rebates
* Top earners get no rebate, pay more Medicare

THE Rudd Government faces another Senate blockade if it pushes ahead with budget plans to claw back $1.9 billion in private health insurance cuts, with both the Coalition and key crossbencher Nick Xenophon accusing the Government of breaking an election promise.

The Government plans to slash the 30 per cent private health insurance rebates in Tuesday's Budget.

Independent Senator Nick Xenophon, who shares the upper house balance of power with the Greens and Family First Senator Steve Fielding, slammed the proposal as “a significant breach of trust” by the Government, which had long promised to retain the rebate.

He also questioned the logic of pursuing more cuts before the Government’s promised Productivity Commission inquiry into the public/private health mix reported, and so soon after last year’s controversial decision to raise the Medicare levy surcharge.

The Coalition, which voted against last year’s Medicare levy surcharge threshold change, called the proposal a "huge broken promise" that would push up health fund premiums and force hundreds of thousands of people onto the public system.


Rebate out, Medicare to rise

The Government plans for the private health insurance rebate to be scaled back from July next year.

The Government will also lift penalties for well-off taxpayers who refuse to buy private insurance - boosting their Medicare levy surcharges by up to 50 per cent.

The Australian understands single people earning more than $74,000 a year and couples on more than $150,000 a year will watch their insurance rebates melt away on a sliding scale.

The payments will cut out completely at incomes of $120,000 for singles and $240,000 for couples - leaving the wealthy to pay for their own insurance in its entirety.

Confirmation of the crackdown provides a glimpse of the scale of the savings task facing the Government as it battles to counter the $200 billion, four-year collapse in the size of its revenue stream caused by the global recession.

An average health insurance package for a family costs about $2600 a year.

The Howard Government gave all insured taxpayers an annual rebate worth 30 per cent of their premiums, with those aged 65 and older eligible for a refund of up to 40per cent.

Currently, uninsured singles earning more than $70,000 a year and couples on more than $140,000 (plus $1500 for each dependent child) face a Medicare levy surcharge worth an extra 1 per cent of their income.

Tuesday's Budget will repudiate Mr Howard's non-means-tested approach.

The new arrangements, taking effect from July next year, will not affect singles earning less than $74,000 a year and couples on less than $150,000 a year.

But the subsidy will tumble from 30 per cent to 20 per cent for singles earning between $74,000 and $90,000 a year and couples earning between $150,000 and $180,000 a year.

It will fall again to 10 per cent for singles earning between $90,000 and $120,000 and couples earning between $180,000 and $240,000 a year.

Singles earning more than $120,000 a year and couples on more than $240,000 will no longer receive subsidies.

However, if they refuse to take out insurance, their Medicare levy surcharge will rise to 1.5 per cent, which would lift the exposure of a couple earning $240,000 a year from $2400 a year to $3600 a year.

Mr Rudd's push to squeeze savings at the expense of middle- and high-income earners raises the possibility of further strikes against middle-class welfare next week, possibly through means tests on rebates for child-care rebates.

Read more in The Australian.

Breastfeeding can kill you

Breastfeeding debate revived after death of British mother Katy Isden | Health & Lifestyle | News.com.au

T was anything but the Hallmark moment she had been expecting.

Sitting among the flowers and cards, clutching her first-born child, my sister Lia could do nothing but sob.

Left alone in her hospital room and attempting to breastfeed her new daughter for the first time on her own, she felt her anxiety skyrocket, the mother guilt take over.

A broken emergency buzzer didn't help, nor post-birth hormones and lack of sleep.

But almost two hours after she'd begun trying to attach her baby's small mouth to her painfully engorged breasts, my niece was screaming and so was her struggling mum.

So consumed by getting it right and worked into a frenzy by the ordeal, it's still not clear exactly when it was that Lia lost control of the muscles on one side of her face.

Within hours doctors diagnosed her with Bell's Palsy, a paralysis of the facial muscles which some believe is triggered by environmental, emotional or physical stress.

In this case, the stress of feeding her child.

Instead of enjoying what was meant to be the happiest time in her life, my beautiful sister was left feeling like a failure and believing herself the Elephant Man.

Her experiences with the births of her next two children were equally traumatic, marred by a recurrent sense of inadequacy and in the case of her third, mastitis so bad she was forced to temporarily relinquish care of her family to seek medical help.

News, then, of the death of 30-year-old British mother Katy Isden, who fell to her death from a New York apartment block after becoming depressed over her bid to breastfeed, should well shock the world but will not surprise mothers with tales like my sister's.

"I'm surprised there are not more mothers like this poor woman," Lia said yesterday.

"The pressure to breastfeed, the anxiety to be this super person, is just no way to live."

The coroner said that although Mrs Isden had been depressed when she died, it was not clear if she fell or jumped. He therefore recorded an open verdict.

Meanwhile, the issue of breastfeeding rages once more.

The research about the benefits of feeding babies "naturally" - delivering vital nutrients and a bond between mother and child - appears black and white.

But for many it's anything but a natural experience; rather a grey area of conflicting advice and a trauma that can torture women.

While some advocacy groups stand accused of adding to the anxiety in the battle between breast or bottle, there is no doubt support is the key to relieving the pressure.

Extra funding for the Australian Breastfeeding Association's national helpline resulted in a 30 per cent increase in those seeking help since March, with more than 28,328 calls taken between October and April.

Carey Wood, a mother of four and ABA volunteer for 10 years, endorses breastfeeding as a valuable "learned skill" but says there's much more to mothering.

"So many of us have issues," she said. "This is a matter of seeking assistance, not being left to feel like a failure.

"The solution is for the community to get behind mothers rather than patronising them with the 'breast is best' slogan. It's what's best for you and your baby that counts, not breastfeeding at any cost."

EXONERATED : $31 PER HOUR IN PRISON

$3.25m payout to Andrew Mallard for wrongful jailing | National News | News.com.au

$3.25m payout to Andrew Mallard for wrongful jailing

By staff writers

The Sunday Times

A WEST Australian man has expressed his "extreme disappointment" at being awarded $3.25m compensation for more than 12 years in jail following his wrongful conviction for murder.

.Andrew Mallard was convicted of the 1994 murder of Mosman Park jeweller Pamela Lawrence.

PerthNow reports that WA Attorney General Christian Porter today announced that the Government had settled with Mr Mallard after lengthy negotiations.

Mr Mallard said he was "extremely disappointed" with the figure.

"I will be conferring with my lawyers," Mr Mallard told Fairfax.

Labor MP John Quigley, a close friend of Mr Mallard who fought for his release from prison, said $7.5 million was being sought following independent legal advice Mr Mallard had received.


"One thing I can say with absolute confidence about this offer - Premier Barnett and Christian Porter wouldn't accept this in return for 12 years jail and the destruction of their life," Mr Quigley said.

"Why should Andrew's life be valued at a lesser rate than Colin Barnett's or Christian Porter's?

"In fact this sum equates to approximately to what Colin Barnett will get from the parliamentary super scheme when he retires."

Initially, he had asked for $10 million in compensation for the 12 years he spent behind bars for a crime he didn't commit - the 1994 murder of Mosman Park jeweller Pamela Lawrence.

Mr Quigley said Attorney-General Christian Porter had indicated he was preparing to offer a multimillion-dollar ex-gratia payout to Mr Mallard.

He said the police and some individual officers would be sued if Mr Mallard was short-changed.

Mr Quigley said Mr Mallard endured emotional and physical trauma during his time in prison.

"Andrew, because he wouldn't admit his guilt in prison, was shipped off to a psychiatric hospital and injected with drugs principally because he refused to admit his guilt,'' he said.


Scott of Hobart Posted at 8:16pm today

    In the UK, people who have been wrongly incarcerated have room and board costs deducted from any compensation payment they may be awarded.. This happened only a few weeks ago, when Sean Hodgson was released after 27 years in prison. His lawyers estimate 100,000 pounds as a figure. Google it if you think it can't be true!

Cory of Perth Posted at 8:14pm today

    Wow this is really much much less than I expected. Although they have said that he can continue civil action in a court of law, and that this is sort of a pre-payment. So if he is awarded more in the court he would get (Amount Awarded - 3.25M). PS for those of you who say $300k is a lot of money for a "job" every year, most of us don't work 24 hours a day, 365 days a week, for 12 years in any job! It works out to LESS THAN $31 PER HOUR IN PRISON!

Rich to pay more

Rich to pay for pension rises in federal Budget | Federal Budget 2009 | News.com.au

PENSIONERS will receive up to $30 a week extra in a Federal Budget that will target Australia's biggest earners.

The rich will have their superannuation tax breaks slashed in half to fund the pension increase, with next Tuesday's Budget expected to boast the largest deficit in Australian history.

The deficit could be as high as $70 billion - a $90 billion turnaround over last year's projected $22.4 billion surplus, the Herald Sun reports.

The Budget will not return to surplus until 2015.

To claw the Budget back into the black, the government is expected to announce a raft of painful spending cuts.

One such measure - that will save $2.7 billion over four years - is understood to be a plan to cut in half the amount wealthy people can salary sacrifice into superannuation.
Related Coverage

* Swan: 'Debt is sustainable'



The maximum that high-income earners can salary sacrifice will be halved from $100,000 to $50,000 for people aged over 50, and from $50,000 to $25,000 for those under 50.

The change means wealthy people will have more of their income taxed at 46.5 per cent rather than the concessional rate of 15 per cent when they make super contributions.

Under current arrangements someone salary sacrificing on an annual income of $57,000 receives reduction in tax of $880, compared with someone on $295,000 who gets a $24,000 reduction.

According to government sources the measure will hit those on average annual incomes of about $220,000, but not affect 98 per cent of people who sacrifice pay into super.

It will be sold as a way of funding the government's promise to increase the single rate of the age pension. It is under pressure to raise it from $284.90 to almost $314 a week.

Those in line for a pay rise include 2.1 million age pensioners, 740,000 disability pensioners, 140,000 carers and 300,000 veterans.

Treasurer Wayne Swan refused to comment on the Budget super hit yesterday, but conceded there would be unpopular decisions.

"These are needed to make room to deliver our commitment to pensioners and to continue supporting jobs and investing in our recovery," Mr Swan said.

Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull said deficits until 2015-16 underlined the recklessness of recent stimulus spending by the government.

"What were they thinking? Piling billion upon billion of new debt, regardless of the consequences," Mr Turnbull's spokesman said.

The environment is becoming less of a priority for Australians, according to the AustraliaSCAN 2009 survey

The environment is becoming less of a priority for Australians, according to the AustraliaSCAN 2009 survey. Graphic: Eric Auld

Australian interest in environment issues wanes as Facebook group urges Earth Hour power on | Environment | News.com.au

Aston Martin One-77

Australian pays $4m to drive Aston Martin One-77 | National News | News.com.au

Aston Martin One-77

HAPPY BIRTHDAY INTERNET! Today it's 40th annivesary of the Internet...

THE history of the internet is a story of military precision, academic vision and the occasional screw-up.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the technologies that led to the creation of the internet and revolutionised the way we work, talk and play.

While computer modems could connect machines as early as the 1960s, they were limited to one-to-one communication.

Eminent scientist J.C.R. Licklider first outlined his vision for an "intergalactic computer network", that predicted many of the ways we use the internet today, in 1962.

Six years later, the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency – or DARPA – put the call out for computer scientists to build a network based on Licklider's ideas.

Information chief Robert Taylor knew there must be a better system than what he had in his office.

His three computers were connected to other machines, but he still had to get up and change seats every time he wanted to look at different data.

Melukai binatang bisa dipenjara!

Melukai binatang bisa dipenjara!

May 04, 2009 05:33pm
Storm Oxburgh
Dog basher ... Storm Oxburgh, 31, appealed the severity of his sentence immediately after being jailed for 14 months / AAP

* Man jailed for bashing dog
* Attack so bad it had to be put down
* Dog belonged to ex and her deaf son

A MAN who sought revenge on his de facto partner by violently bashing her Staffordshire terrier so badly it had to be put down, has been jailed for more than a year.

Storm Oxburgh, 31, pleaded guilty in the Heidelberg Magistrates' Court to aggravated cruelty causing death to an animal and failing to provide veterinary or other treatment.

The court heard Oxburgh went to the home of his partner Vanessa Hansen on September 9, 2007 and took the black-and-white dog belonging to her and her deaf, 10-year-old son Bailey.

Oxburgh returned to his home in the Melbourne suburb of Reservoir with the dog and at about 11pm he took it outside and beat it repeatedly over the head with a baseball bat.

Police called to the scene found the dog with severe head injuries and barely breathing and made the decision to euthanase it.

In the summary read to the court, police prosecutor Senior Constable Steve Wood said Oxburgh's explanation for beating the dog was that he wanted to get back at his de facto and her son.
Snr Const Wood said that on the same day Oxburgh made 82 calls to Ms Hansen which she failed to answer.

Oxburgh also left a text message on Ms Hansen's phone in which he threatened to kill the dog unless she returned his calls.

Magistrate Jenny Grubissa said Oxburgh's crime was abhorrent.

She jailed Oxburgh for 14 months with a non-parole period of eight months.

But Oxburgh immediately lodged an appeal against the severity of the sentence and was granted bail until his next hearing on August 18.

Outside court Ms Hansen said her son still asks about his dead dog Rocco.

"Bailey will never get over Rocco, never," Ms Hansen said.

Illegal immigrants who overstay visas will no longer be put in detention camps

ILLEGAL immigrants will no longer be locked up and deported when caught by authorities, in a major softening of immigration procedures.

Instead, people who overstay their visas will be invited into an immigration office and could even get temporary bridging visas.

Immigration officers have been instructed not to detain visa violators unless they are known to be violent criminals or have previously been instructed to leave.

Until last week, illegal foreigners were immediately detained at detention centres and put on planes home within weeks.

The new approach is in line with a general softening of immigration policy by the Rudd Government.

Under the policy, officers are required to issue illegal foreigners with bridging visas and work with them to get them home.

"We basically have to invite them into the office for a coffee," an insider within the department said.

"They can get a couple of weeks or six months, whatever it takes to get them home without detaining them."

Mandatory detention was axed last year, but until now only asylum seekers have been allowed to live in the community.

The new directive from Immigration Minister Chris Evans' office was issued to immigration officers verbally last week.

There are almost 50,000 visa overstayers living illegally in Australia.

More than one in 10 is from China.

Entrants from the US, Malaysia and Britain are also big overstayers.

Most come in on tourist visas, but about 3600 are foreign students who disappear into the community when their course is over.

The Government has also closed down offshore processing facilities on Nauru and Manus Island.

Senator Evans' directive has divided opinion within department ranks, with some fearing the softer approach could send a dangerous message.

"I guess it says people can pretty much do whatever they want now," the insider said.

"They've been caught, but they can stay and go home when they want."

The move could open the floodgates for unwelcome visitors.

"It certainly could be open for exploitation," the insider said. "Prisons are not nice places to be in. Many of these people are not criminals, but I guess it doesn't convey a strong message."

Senator Evans said detention would only be used as a last resort.

"The presumption will be that persons will remain in the community while their immigration status is resolved," he said.

"If a person is complying with immigration processes and is not a risk to the community, then detention in a detention centre cannot be justified.

"The department will have to justify a decision to detain - not presume detention."

Hari Pertama: Komitmen Baru Amerika untuk Abad ke-21

100 Hari Pertama: Komitmen Baru Amerika untuk Abad ke-21

Oleh: James L. Jones, Penasihat Keamanan Nasional AS



Seratus hari yang lalu, Amerika Serikat merayakan pelantikan presidennya yang ke-44. Masyarakat di seluruh dunia turut bersama kami merayakan sebuah peristiwa yang bersejarah bagi rakyat Amerika dan juga bagi semua orang yang meyakini tercapainya harapan akan masa depan yang lebih baik bagi mereka maupun anak-anak mereka.



Kegembiraan dan optimisme yang kami rasakan sebagai bangsa Amerika pada tanggal 20 Januari lalu terus tumbuh, bahkan saat menghadapi krisis ekonomi global yang menyentak kesadaran, berita tentang sebuah virus flu, dan tantangan-tantangan di abad ke-21 seperti terorisme dan proliferasi nuklir; perubahan iklim dan kemiskinan; konflik yang berkepanjangan dan wabah penyakit yang berbahaya.



Tantangan-tantangan ini tidaklah disebabkan oleh sebuah negara, dan tidak pula dapat dipecahkan oleh sebuah negara tanpa bantuan negara lain. Seperti yang dikatakan Presiden Obama di hari keduanya sebagai Presiden AS, “Demi keamanan nasional kita serta aspirasi masyarakat di seluruh dunia, sebuah era baru kepemimpinan Amerika di dunia telah dimulai.”



Selama 100 hari pertama pemerintahannya, Presiden Obama telah menunjukkan kepada dunia seperti apa komitmen Amerika di bawah kepemimpinannya.



Pertama, Obama dan pemerintahannya berkomitmen untuk menyusun kebijakan luar negeri yang menjamin keamanan bagi rakyat Amerika serta negara-negara sahabat dan sekutunya. Komitmen global yang dibuat berdasarkan kepentingan bersama dan rasa saling menghormati adalah titik awal kebijakan luar negeri kami. Apabila di kemudian hari muncul situasi di mana pendekatan seperti ini tak dapat digunakan, Amerika Serikat akan bersedia mendengarkan dan berbicara dengan pihak-pihak yang berseteru untuk mengedepankan kepentingan nasional kami serta kepentingan negara-negara yang bergantung pada kepemimpinan AS dalam isu-isu keamanan. Dalam situasi di mana penggunaan kekuatan tak dapat dihindari, pihak yang berseteru dengan kami hendaknya tidak berangan-angan dalam memperkirakan hasil akhirnya. Inilah alasan mengapa kami akan terus mempertahankan Angkatan Bersenjata kami sebagai yang terbaik serta paling diperhitungkan dan dihormati di seluruh dunia.



Untuk menjalankan strategi komitmen kami, dan segera setelah menjabat, Presiden menunjuk sejumlah diplomat AS ulung sebagai Utusan Khusus dan Perwakilan – untuk perdamaian di Timur Tengah, untuk Asia Barat Daya, untuk Sudan, untuk Afghanistan dan Pakistan, dan untuk Perubahan Iklim. Fakta ini sendiri melukiskan bahwa abad ke-21 adalah saat di mana strategi-strategi nasional akan menjadi front terdepan dari tenaga dan fokus kami pada hal-hal yang berhubungan dengan keamanan nasional dan internasional. Hal ini menunjukkan sebuah pengakuan yang jelas bahwa kita harus berhadapan dengan dunia di saat ini dan bukan dunia pada abad ke-20. Selama tiga bulan terakhir ini, komunitas keamanan nasional termasuk para diplomat kami yang sedang bertugas di luar negeri terlibat dalan upaya diplomasi yang aktif dan efektif untuk mengatasi berbagai macam tantangan yang harus kita hadapi. Sampai saat ini, hasilnya cukup menjanjikan namun masih banyak yang harus dilakukan.



Presiden Obama juga telah menegaskan komitmennya secara jelas untuk menjalin dialog yang mendalam dan positif dengan komunitas Muslim di seluruh dunia. Itulah alasannya mengapa ia bersedia melakukan wawancara perdananya sebagai presiden dengan televisi Al-Arabiya. Itulah juga mengapa ia mengatakan kepada rakyat dan pemimpin Iran bahwa ia ingin membangun sebuah dialog baru mengenai berbagai macam isu yang kita hadapi, dan juga mengapa ia membahas masalah kemitraan yang baru dalam bidang pendidikan, kesehatan, dan peluang dalam pidatonya di hadapan Parlemen Turki. Akhirnya, itu juga mengapa ia menegaskan secara jelas bahwa Amerika Serikat tidak dan tidak akan pernah berperang melawan Islam.



Kedua, kami bertekad untuk memecah, membongkar, dan mengalahkan Al Qaeda. Pada bulan Maret, Presiden mengumukan hasil kajian strategi yang komprehensif untuk Pakistan dan Afghanistan yang pada akhirnya akan memberikan sumber-sumber daya yang kami butuhkan untuk mencapai tujuan kami sekaligus membantu rakyat Afghanistan dan Pakistan mendapatkan keamanan dan peluang yang lebih besar. Di Strasbourg, pada peringatan 60 tahun berdirinya Organisasi Pakta Pertahanan Atlantik Utara (NATO), Presiden memperoleh dukungan internasional yang luas atas strateginya dan komitmen dari para sekutu NATO untuk menciptakan sebuah konsep strategi yang baru sehingga aliansi ini dapat menjadi lebih relevan dalam menghadapi berbagai tantangan pada abad ke-21. Dan di Baghdad, Presiden kembali menekankan komitmennya untuk secara bertanggung jawab mengurangi jumlah pasukan kami sesuai dengan Status of Forces Agreement yang dirundingkan dengan Pemerintah Irak sambil membantu rakyat Irak mendapatkan tanggung jawabnya atas masa depan kedaulatannya sendiri.



Ketiga, Presiden Obama berupaya menjajaki pendekatan yang bersifat umum untuk mengatasi berbagai tantangan global. Di London, ia membantu membangun konsensus penting mengenai langkah-langkah nyata mengatasi krisis keuangan global seperti kerangka peraturan global yang baru, meningkatkan bantuan bagi negara-negara berkembang, dan komitmen baru atas perdagangan yang bebas dan adil. Di Praha, ia meluncurkan sebuah agenda yang ambisius untuk mengamankan semua bahan-bahan nuklir yang mudah diperoleh di seluruh dunia dalam waktu empat tahun, menekan proliferasi nuklir, dan memperjuangkan sebuah dunia yang bebas dari senjata nuklir.



Tidak jauh dari negeri kami, Presiden Obama mengakui bahwa kami ikut berbagi tanggung jawab dalam mengatasi secara efektif peredaran obat terlarang dan perdagangan gelap persenjataan dan ia telah meluncurkan sebuah program baru untuk memerangi kejahatan yang berkaitan dengan obat terlarang di sepanjang perbatasan antara AS dan Meksiko. Presiden juga mengumumkan dicabutnya larangan pengiriman uang dan perjalanan ke Kuba bagi warga negara Amerika keturunan Kuba, yang menandai sebuah era baru dengan negara tetangga kita di benua ini dengan menawarkan kerjasama di berbagai bidang pada acara pertemuan KTT Amerika.



Presiden juga bekerja secara efektif dengan berbagai organisasi multilateral. Dalam beberapa minggu terakhir Amerika Serikat bertemu dengan sekutu-sekutunya dan masyarakat dunia sebagai respons terhadap peluncuran rudal Korea Utara, serta mengembangkan upaya internasional untuk memerangi perompakan di perairan lepas pantai Somalia. Akhirnya, Amerika Serikat telah memberi sinyal atas keinginannya untuk tetap memimpin di beberapa prakarsa penting yang sangat signifikan bagi bumi kita ini dalam memajukan kemitraan di bidang energi yang bersih dan perubahan iklim, dimulai dari pertemuan persiapan pertama Forum Ekonomi Utama tentang Energi dan Iklim.



Pada akhirnya, Presiden Obama menafikan pilihan yang menyesatkan antara keamanan Amerika dan prinsip yang dianut. Pada hari pertama menjabat, ia memerintahkan penutupan penjara Teluk Guantanamo dalam kurun waktu satu tahun, melarang teknik-teknik interogasi penahanan terkini, dan secara gamblang menegaskan tanpa ada pengecualian atau dalih bahwa Amerika Serikat sepenuhnya mendukung Konvensi Jenewa dan tidak mempraktikan ataupun mentolerir bentuk-bentuk penyiksaan. Dalam hal ini, kami juga diharapkan untuk memimpin sebagai panutan dengan kekuatan kami.



Sementara telah banyak yang telah diucapkan dan dilakukan dalam seratus hari pertama pemerintahan Presiden Obama, bagi kita yang diberi kehormatan untuk mengabdi kepada negara kita di era yang sangat rumit dan menantang ini sepenuhnya menyadari bahwa kita baru berada di awal sebuah perjalanan. Kita yakin kita akan melakukan kemajuan dalam memenuhi beberapa tantangan besar yang kita hadapi untuk memperbaiki posisi Amerika sebagai teman dan mitra bagi semua yang mencari masa depan yang damai, makmur dan bermartabat bagi warganya.