“Pope Francis on Thursday urged the downtrodden to change the world economic order, denouncing a “new colonialism” by agencies that impose austerity programs and calling for the poor to have the “sacred rights” of labor, lodging and land.”
Joanna Rothkopf reports in Salon:
The United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has recently concluded its 85th Session during which time it considered seven state reports, including one on the United States.
The report praised many progressive steps the U.S. has taken to ensure equality, including the termination of the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, the adoption of the Fair Sentencing Act and the adoption of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
However, the number of issues the report raises is pretty abominable. CERD expressed concern over the following problems:
- Lack of a national human rights institution
- Persistent racial profiling and illegal surveillance
- Prevalence and under-reporting of racist hate speech and hate crimes
- Disparate impact of environmental pollution in low income and minority communities
- Restrictive voter identification laws leading to unequal right to vote
- Criminalization of homelessness when homeless people are…
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Those that defend deportation of political, economic, and environmental refugees, those that stand next to busses of frightened and detained children along our borders, those that literally rock the busses and threaten to set fire to them, are either ignorant of the US role in the economic exploitation of these cultures and the resulting impact on climate change, or are deliberately set upon the poor people of the earth in a genocidal campaign to eliminate humanity from this earth. Look into the lives of these children and their families and understand what we have done.
Tanya’s Comment: As I read this wonderful news, I am also saddened that transgender people in the United States are not treated as equal citizens. There is still discrimination in housing, employment, and other areas of life that transgender people face everyday, and that many of us are oblivious to. One of my transgender female friends is a nurse and college student, while another is a lawyer and happily married to a woman. They want the same things as everyone else, and they are equally as deserving of those things as everyone else.
New Delhi: Delhi University has officially accepted transgender men and women for their postgraduate programmers this year and have plans to extend this policy to undergraduate courses as well.
Around 90,000 candidates had applied for various postgraduate courses this year of which nine were from the transgender community, according to Delhi University officials.
The change accepting transgender men and women in undergraduate courses will take effect from the next academic year (2015-16) after it introduces space for the third gender in its application forms, reported timesofindia.indiatimes.com.
“We had planned to start transgender admissions in undergraduate courses from this year but could not do so due to administrative reasons. From 2015-16 academic session, we will be introducing the third gender option in centralized admission forms and also make necessary policies for their admission,” the university’s registrar Alka Sharma told timesofindia.indiatimes.com.
Sharma pointed out that his university’s “transgender initiative” was taken before it…
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via How Local Governments Are Hacking Immigration Reform – Spencer Amdur – The Atlantic.
Only the federal government can grant amnesty. But cities and counties can effectively opt to stop deportations—and increasingly, they are.
SPENCER AMDUR MAY 13 2014
States and cities are taking immigration reform into their own hands. With prospects for comprehensive legislation bleak in Washington, local governments have begun making decisions about who gets deported and who doesn’t by refusing to participate in a system that has come to rely on them. After a few years of slow but steady progress, local reform is now taking off.
In the last three weeks, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Denver, and counties in Oregon, Colorado, Washington, and California have announced they will no longer help federal immigration police carry out deportations. These decisions, spurred by recent federal-court rulings, add to the growing chorus of state and local governments that have recently…
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BACKGROUND | SOURCE FACEBOOK
ATTENTION ACTIVISTS: MENTALLY ILL PEOPLE IN INDONESIA CHAINED AND CONFINED IN CAGES AND CELLS NOT RECEIVING PROPER CARE! please click the “see more” option to see all I have shared here.. very important…
As we Fight for Animal Rights, I wish to bring your attention to the plight of the mentally ill in Indonesia… this link gives insight to the lack of care for the institutionalized individuals with mental disorders… As activists we fight not just for animals, we fight for the rights of all living beings, including these people…
This country needs intervention of some kind.. Humanitarian folks from perhaps the states and or another country that have the ability to help facilitate a new way of caring for their mentally ill… I truly don’t think this is to be cruel so much as they are uneducated on how to deal with them and we…
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Sustainable Prosperity, Published on Friday, August 9, 2013 by Common….
A bit late catching up with this, but due to it’s importance, I reckon it’s not too late.
While Acton’s dictum about the relationship between power and corruption comes to mind, he had other observations about the State which are just a relevant:
Whenever a single definite object is made the supreme end of the State, be it the advantage of a class, the safety of the power of the country, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the support of any speculative idea, the State becomes for the time inevitably absolute. (Wikipedia)
A note of caution may be in order. Before rushing to judgement, it may be wise to fully understand the nature of what is happening, lest our remedies be incomplete. From the article…
Existence of “secret backdoor” loophole appears to contrast with repeated presidential assurances
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League of Bloggers For a Better World 