Manic, Chill

thefrogman:

Yesterday my inbox was flooded with people asking me to post Invisible Children’s latest video calling for the capture of Joseph Kony. I don’t automatically post things like this just because everyone else is doing it. My gut was telling me there was more to this and I better do some more research before advocating anything. 

I’ve been pretty sick this past week and after discovering just how complicated this issue is, my fatigue has kept me from being able to properly wrap my brain around it. 

The best I can tell, Kony is certainly evil. We should all be made aware of him and the horrors of child armies. However, whether or not Invisible Children should be the group spearheading this awareness is certainly in question. And by donating to their cause, you might be sending money to aid the Ugandan army. 

This is problematic to me. The Ugandan government and their army seem to have a less than stellar reputation. In the past, we have given money, weapons, and training to foreign militaries only to end up fighting against those weapons we gave and those soldiers we trained.

I like the awareness aspect of the campaign, but the solution being proposed concerns me. I’ve always felt that building up infrastructure and improving education are more potent solutions than hunting down and killing villains.

I do hope Kony is captured and pays for his crimes. I do hope this campaign brings much awareness to the issue. But until I have a better understanding of the situation, I don’t think I can recommend donating to Invisible Children. 

I do recommend doing your own research and deciding for yourself what is appropriate.

Iran’s supreme court has dismissed the death sentence passed against an Iranian-American man accused of spying for the CIA, and called for judicial review of the case according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

“The supreme court nullified the execution sentence against Amir Mirza Hekmati and sent it to an affiliate court,” said judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei without giving further details.

Hekmati, a 28-year-old of Iranian descent born in the state of Arizona, was arrested in December and Iran’s Intelligence Ministry accused him of receiving training at US bases in neighbouring Afghanistan and Iraq.

The United States urged Iran to grant Hekmati access to legal counsel and to release him without delay.

Read More

Prime Minister Mario Monti, a Catholic crusading to put Italy’s economy in order by ending entrenched privileges such as tax breaks, is striking against an unlikely target - his own Church.

 

Monti’s government issued a statement on Wednesday night saying it had informed the European Commission that it would pass a law ending the Church’s exemption from local property taxes on its properties used for commercial purposes.

Estimates on how much this can bring to government coffers have ranged from 700 million euros ($908 million) to more than 1 billion euros.

So who wants to start betting on how long it takes “Monti Hates Catholics” to appear in something produced by News Corp/News International?

(Source: sarahlee310)

kohenari:

I wrote this piece on my MacBook Air and I proofread it on my iPad, devices which are dear to me and which power much of my work and recreation. Like many happy Apple customers, though, I’ve been forced to consider the very unhappy conditions under which these gadgets – and others like them – are produced. How should those of us who love and depend upon our electronics feel about the suffering of the factory workers who are laboring and even dying for us?

While information about worker suicides and unsafe conditions has been making the rounds for some time, the latest and loudest critique began with a recent stirring piece in the New York Times on the operations of Foxconn, the manufacturing partner that operates electronics factories in China. Foxconn seemingly holds the health and safety of workers in outright contempt:

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

In addition, there have been numerous reports of injuries arising from the use of harmful chemicals and from explosions in some of the factories. And, of course, there have been several instances of worker suicides, which have rightfully drawn a great deal of attention.

On the one hand, these terrible conditions gnaw at us because we know it’s our demand for high-tech products at low prices that drives corporations to pay workers less and spend less on safety, not to mention move their manufacturing into countries with little to no regulation. On the other hand, workers freely choose to take these jobs; in fact, Foxconn regularly turns away fully informed job seekers since the pay and the conditions they offer are better than many other options available, particularly for young rural workers. Without the demand and thus the factories, many of the people who are being exploited would be struggling to feed their families and would end up exploited in some other way. Indeed, this is the position on sweatshops taken by Nicholas Kristof and by Paul Krugman.

With those two poles of the debate in mind, I still feel comfortable asserting that the exploitation of poor workers is a moral wrong. We ought to prevent others from exploiting disadvantaged people. In order to end the exploitation, neither market forces nor an organized boycott will suffice. We need government regulation requiring sufficient wages and safe conditions. Regulation will almost surely lead to higher prices, but it’s time we priced human dignity into the feature checklists of our immorally inexpensive electronics.

Go read the full piece by Dr. Ari Kohen. It’s definitely worth a few minutes of your time.