Synopsis: “To See If I Am Smiling, the frank testimonials of six female Israeli soldiers stationed in Gaza and the West Bank pack a powerful emotional punch. The young women revisit their tours of duty in the occupied territories with surprising honesty and strip bare stereotypes of gender differences in the military. The former soldiers share shocking moments of negligence, flippancy, immaturity and power-tripping as they describe atrocities they witnessed and participated in.”
“What I would like is for the general public to wake up and understand that as these good paying jobs disappear so to do our tax dollars. I paid close to $25,000 in income tax alone in 2011. At $18 an hour I wouldn’t pay even close to that. As a country we have the lowest corporate tax rate of all the G7 countries. As jobs like mine disappear where do the federal tax dollars come from to sustain our fantastic country? This is slowly becoming a country of haves and have-nots.”
“[T]he [magazine] does not pay its interns but instead offers them academic credit, a practice that is widespread among publishing companies and in other competitive industries. … Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, a company may legally offer unpaid internships so long as they are educational and benefit the intern and not necessarily the employer, according to information published on the Department of Labor’s website.”
Another apartheid-law is created by Israel’s judiciary.
“Israeli rights groups and MPs on Thursday denounced a court ruling upholding a law that prevents Palestinians married to Arab Israelis from obtaining Israeli citizenship or residency.”
Whatever one thinks of capturing a soldier from an attacking army, kidnapping civilians is plainly a far more serious crime – unless, of course, they are mere unpeople | By Noam Chomsky
–A rather long article on copyright and the academy and how we need to keep fighting for fair implementations of copyright and the “copyleft” alternatives to allow sharing of data and analysis in an increasingly commercialised academy and monopoly publishing world.
Oh, and I wrote it.
Larry Wilkerson: National Defense Authorization Act that passed the Senate giving the military power for indefinite detention without trial is a draconian violation of our rights | The Real News
–New Education is a Right campaign website from the Canadian Federation of Students was launched today. The Federation is calling for a national day of action on February 1, 2012.
“Early Monday morning, police surrounded the camp, but eventually said they would not evict the protesters. Reuters reports that around 2,000 protesters joined the camp to show their support.”
“On Nov. 8, voters in [Ohio] will decide whether to keep a new law passed by the Republican-dominated legislature that all but eliminates collective bargaining in the public sector. … The new law is sweeping. It limits public-sector collective bargaining to wages only and eliminates binding arbitration, allowing state and local governments, as well as school districts, to dictate contract terms if no agreement is reached. The bill forces public workers to contribute more for their pension and health benefits, while allowing employers to roll back benefits unilaterally. It eliminates mandatory union dues and lowers the decertification threshold to 30 per cent of workers.”
–The not so slow decent into fascist police tactics in the US. One has to get beyond the ludicrous nature of policing in the US and look at why Wolf was arrested: for questioning a lie told by authorities. This is good evidence that they have not just started the slide, but are well on their way.
