Little Mr. Pluto and Today's Japan

Since the start of the nuclear boom in the 1970s, Japan's utilities have relied on temporary workers for maintenance and plant repair jobs, the experts said. They were often paid in cash with little training and no follow-up health screening. This practice has eroded the ability of nuclear plant operators to manage the massive risks workers now face and prompted calls for the Japanese government to take over the Fukushima clean-up effort.

In the mid-1990s Little Mr. Pluto debuted in Japanese TV wearing a green helmet with a pair of antennae and the chemical symbol for plutonium (Pu). Promising to "never be scary or dangerous," Little Pluto extolled the benefits of plutonium, which Japanese nuclear authorities have viewed as a fuel of the future for fast breeder reactor technology.
Today nearly 70 percent of Japanese believe nuclear safety measures are not yet sufficient to allow restarting reactors taken down for routine maintenance, a poll showed on Monday, suggesting Japan may have difficulty keeping plants running and avoiding a power crunch amid the protracted nuclear crisis at Fukushima.

"The Truth of the Apple iPad Behind Foxconn's Lies"

Foxconn is the largest electronics manufacturing in the world.  It’s also one of the most profitable companies with $ 79 billion.

The company mainly works for such a notable company as Apple, Hp and Dell.

Internationally,  Foxconn is best known because in 2010 at least 18 of its workers tried to end their lives.

Therefore a number of Foxconn’s customers like Apple have publicly pledged to “work with Foxconn” to live up to higher international labour standards.

Unfortunately, Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (Sacom), a Hong Kong-based labour organization, still denounces the false statement by Foxconn and its custumers.

A short video on working conditions at Foxconn's iPad production site in Chengdu, “the Truth of the Apple iPad Behind Foxconn's Lies”, has been released to unveil the exploitations at Foxconn to Apple's consumers. 

The footage was taken in March and April 2011 during Sacom's investigations. It documented labour rights abuses at Foxconn's plants in Chengdu, including misleading job advertisement, dangerous working environment, inadequate measures on work safety, excessive and forced overtime work, and deprived of social life. Foxconn's plants in Chengdu exclusively produce for Apple. Regrettably, Apple condones the labour rights violations at Foxconn.

How is it possible?

30 years of HIV, it's long enough

On June 5, 1981, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a report on a rare and deadly illness affecting five young, gay men in Los Angeles.

In many countries it's still a shame. Here comes the story of Magid.



An estimated 34 million people are living with HIV and AIDS across the globe. Many do not even know they have it, but of those who do more than nine million are still not getting vital treatment.
That ratio is particularly bad in countries where the virus is stigmatised, such as Egypt. The UN estimates that about 11,000 people there have HIV, but only 400 are seeking treatment.
But now one man is trying to change that. Magid is the first HIV positive person to speak out in Egypt about his experience. He told Al Jazeera his story.

Iran players keep hijab on, FIFA cancels qualifying match

Ruling soccer body FIFA canceled Friday's game in Amman and declared Jordan 3-0 winners after the Iranian authorities refused to allow their players to remove their full headscarves in accordance with the FIFA dress code. FIFA's article 4 says that players are not allowed to wear religiously or politically associated clothing.

Well, rules are rules but I guess, in this case, they had been written by a westerner. We have already big problems with muslims because of cultural differences and this doesn't seem the right way to solve them. Strangely, the decision was made in the name of freedom! 

Why let anyone else choose what you're allowed to wear?

If Iranian women are happy with that, what's the matter?

It only seems very uncomfortable to play wrapped in that way in the heat of the Middle-East but this is another matter.

Germany protects 17 nazi war criminals

After more than 15 years in hiding, onetime Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic was in a Belgrade jail Thursday night to face charges that he presided over Europe's worst massacre since World War II.
Unfortunately, in Europe there are still about seventeen former Nazi war criminals who live happily in their homes in Germany despite having been definitively convicted to life imprisonment as they are responsible for some of the worst massacres of World War II !. The story sounds incredible, about seventeen former Nazi war criminals are still among us!. European arrest warrants haven't brought them to jail yet.
The story was confirmed by an Italian military prosecutor in Rome, Marco De Paolis. In Italy the prosecutor is currently handling the larger number of these cases after the discovery of the "armoire of shame" (where hundreds of cases like them were found) when he was a military prosecutor in La Spezia. 

In particular, eight people had been sentenced to life imprisonment by the Italian Supreme Court for the massacre of Sant'Anna di Stazzema (560 victims), three for Marzabotto's (770 victims), one for the massacres of Civitella Val di Chiana, Cornia and San Pancrazio (244 victims), one for Branzolino and San Tome's (10 victims), one for the Certosa di Farneta's (more than 60 deaths) and one for Falze of Cortona's (16 civilians killed). Only Josef Scheungraber, 93 years old, is in prison serving the sentence just because he was sentenced in Germany too.

Generation 2.0: Duma intern fired after whistleblowing blog

A college student who blogged about State Duma deputies playing cards and surfing the Internet during sessions has lost his Duma internship.
Some politicians even tried to give their identities to friends and so forth and fly for free where they weren't supposed to.

The sharp-eyed blogger posted a raft of time-wasting and expense fiddling violations on his “Diary of a Democratic Extremist”.
The blogger's angry blast was reported in Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, but while his blog was still accessible at LiveJournal, the incriminating pages were unavailable on Tuesday morning. Russia is not the only country to experience expenses scams among its lawmakers. In 2009 Britain's parliament was rocked by an expenses scandal, which saw MPs claiming inappropriately for housing expenses and led to criminal charges and public uproar.

Generation 2.0: Do you want to make more money? A good friend is all you need

Are you tired to watch your money go up and down?... keep in touch with your schoolmates.

Harvard Business School's Lauren Cohen and Christopher J. Malloy, along with University of Chicago colleague Andrea Frazzini, investigated the ties between more than 1,800 sell-side analysts and the management of public firms, and the subsequent performance of stock recommendations. The study is titled "Sell-side school ties" and suggests that agents in financial markets can gain informational advantages through social networks. Data on the educational background of sell-side analysts and senior corporate officers shows that analysts outperform by up to 6.60% per year on their stock recommendations when they have an educational link to a company.

It seems to be what happened with Raj Rajaratnam.

In 2009 he was arrested by the FBI on allegations of insider trading and on May 11, 2011 was found guilty of conspiracy and securities fraudnews. With more than $60 million, it was the largest hedge fund insider trading case in United States history. Rajaratnam allegedly profited from information received from Robert Moffat, an IBM executive, Rajiv Goel, an Intel Capital executive, and Anil Kumar, a McKinsey & Company executive. It was reported that Rajaratnam, Goel and Kumar were all of class of 1983 from Wharton business school.

According to a famous saying, who finds a friend, finds a treasure! 

"Work will make you free"

In China hundreds of millions of “peasants” from the countryside are on the move. Workers-of-rural-origins are preferred as a low cost source of labor and considered better fit for training and adaption to the competitive pressures of the market.

Since the beginning of 2010, a startling ten Foxconn employees in Shenzhen tried to end their lives. Therefore a number of Foxconn’s customers, notably Apple, HP and Dell, have pledged to “work with Foxconn” to live up to higher international labour standards.

But till today in Shenzhen Foxconn’s employees are housed in dormitories surrounded with “anti-suicide” nets.

Will we ever see anyone caring for our poor asses?

Many people from Wall Street think inflation is now the biggest threat to the U.S. economy. In Brooklyn many more than Wall Steet's rather think the biggest threat is falling into another recession. 

Who is right?

Meanwhile the most significant economic news from the first quarter of 2011 is the decline in real wages. 

In fact, millions of Americans, in order to keep their jobs, are accepting lower wages. 

What do you get like this?

The only thing you get is consumers who can't buy enough to keep the economy going.

Why doesn't Wall Street get it?

Generation 2.0: List of Demands by March 15 in Dar'a, Syria

This statement was originally issued in Arabic by Dir'a's Youth of March 15. The English translation was made available by The Angry Arab News Service.]

Leadership of the Glorious Revolution of the Youth of 15 March, Diraa – Syria

To the Syrian people; to the descendants of Salih al-Ali, Sultan Pasha al-Atrash, Ibrahim Hananou; to all the free people of Syria in all the provinces of Syria; to all the sons of the proud Arab tribes; to the Kurdish brothers; and to all the sects and nationalities with whom we share life on the land of this nation.

We promise you to continue our revolution until this criminal regime which kills its sons in cold blood is brought down. We hope all the brothers will come out tomorrow God willing in million-person demonstrations and announce civil disobedience and refusal to go to work centers and to join your brethren in this glorious revolution and to support your brethren in the province of Diraa, Latakia, Homs, az-Zabdani, Douma, Daria, al-Kiswa, Damascus, at-Tal, and the rest of the provinces revolting until the regime is brought down and the goals of the revolution are achieved which are:

French entrepreneur offers to pay veil fines

A businessman is offering to sell properties to help Muslim women pay any fines that they may receive for wearing the full veil in public if a law is voted through the French parliament. 

The man, Rachid Nekkaz who tried to run French presidential election in 2007 , has set up an association, ‘Hands off my Constitution’, which fights banning the veil in the street as unconstitutional. 

Critics see the bill as unconstitutional and difficult to enforce and say only a tiny minority of Muslim women wear the full veil, and that the legislation is a step towards tighter restraints on individual freedom. 

Supporters of the ban argue that wearing garments which hide women’s faces violates the republican ideals of secularism and gender equality.
In this story everyone has his reasons and the Truth is always somewhere in the middle. 

I myself do support individual freedom but at the same time I must also remember that France already bans any other religious symbols from schools and voters have indicated support for a ban of the full veil.

In brief, Law must be respected in the same way as people do in the rest of the world.

(From http://touchepasamaconstitution.wordpress.com/)

The War you see: wag the dog

"Truth is the first casualty of war" (Aeschylus, Greek Tragic Dramatist, 525 BC-456 BC) . It's as old as history. 
Who remembers the pictures of the fake mass grave in Rumania that everybody broadcast in 1989?
This was one of the many horror stories published by media and that's similar to other fake events such the Iraqi incubatores and the non-existent mass graves in Kosovo. 

Something like that seems to have happened in Libya. I am talking about the burial site discovered in Tripoli by the supporters of OneDayOnEarth.org. It's the "Timisoara syndrome".
It's highly probable that, rather than "mass grave", those are one of many "collective burials" of african migrants whose boats capsize frequently near the Libyan coast and whose bodies are then carried by the tide on the beach. What we can seen clearly from the video of the "mass graves" is that they're not "common". Those seems to be single-hole, dug out calmly and even with some care. Media and newspapers speak of "makeshift cemetery"on the beach. Cemetery certainly, but actually not improvised.
It is propably a cemetery at Sidi Hamed, who is close to the beach near the residential district of Gargaresh in Tripoli.
There are too conflicting reports on the number of killed, airstrikes by Gaddafi forces, the number of cities controlled by the opposition - about literally everything

In brief, the entire Western narrative is misleading people again. 

see also The War you don't see by John Pilger

US shutdown: regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race

Sometime ago Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Chinese President Hu Jintao a "dictator". It was surely right but it wasn't ok. Why?.
When questioned on congressional Democrats' end-of-year compromise with Republicans that gave tax cuts to America's highest earners, Reid spoke about the need for Democrats to work within the system as it exists - a system, he said, that is very different than that of China. That was all right too,  so what's the matter? I myself agreed on it, if he would mean just that but he didn't unfortunately.

Beckhams are 'too working class' for posh Haberdashers' Aske's school

"As soon as you're born they make you feel small/By giving you no time instead of it all/Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all/A working class hero is something to be/A working class hero is something to be /They hurt you at home and they hit you at school/They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool/Till you're so crazy you can't follow their rules/A working class hero is something to be/A working class hero is something to be...".

John Lennon was right that's why he had been killed. After a bank worker fired for Facebook post comparing her £7-an-hour wage to Lloyds boss's £4,000-an-hour salary, someone was proud to write "the Beckhams are too working class". The comments were made on the popular internet site Mumsnet, the website set up by mothers to give advice on parenting and family issues. Beckhams' apparent choice of £14,000-a-year Haberdashers’ Aske’s upset somebody. One former Haberdashers’ pupil, calling herself crazygracieuk, wrote: "David and Victoria are working class". Is this Cameron's Big Society?

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1373853/Beckhams-working-class-posh-Haberdashers-Askes-school.html#ixzz1ImFzk8S7

Who armed Gaddafi? Which EU countries export the most arms to Libya?

EU arms exports to Libya 
full data at www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog 

   

Swiss TV channel censors the Simpsons

The Swiss channel SF has decided to suspend all those episodes of the Simpsons which are set in the Nuclear Power Plant where Homer uses to work without care. The network judged it as offensive because of the recent and dramatic news from Japan. 

Should anyone be allowed to decide what we must think?