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Wednesday, June 14, 2006 |
Women and Employment in Central and Eastern Europe - a report from Unifem:
"Since the early 1980s women's lives in the eastern and western part of the European continent have become increasingly similar. Immediately after World War II, a sharp and politically buttressed contrast existed between the worlds of the female Communist factory worker and her Western counterpart, the stereotypically suburban stay-at-home mother. By the 1980s, however, women in most developed Western capitalist countries began to acquire paid jobs and demand equal treatment inside and outside the labour force, while women in state socialist societies were granted long maternity leaves and started to drop out of paid work for lengthy periods in their prime career years.
These trends may have started decades earlier, but their convergence became even more pronounced in the 1990s after the collapse of state socialism and the related escalation in economic globalization. Most strikingly, as this report shows, East European women were forced out of the labour force in unprecedented numbers, exactly at the time when their Western counterparts started to take up paid employment in earnest at the encouragement of national and transnational governments as well as corporate employers. The connection between these two processes - for example, through the supply of cheap careworkers migrating West - should not be ignored.
Did women's labour market position in the region decline after 1990? Did it deteriorate relative to that of men? - an analysis of the UNECE database shows that the answer is yes. Women's employment opportunities and standard of living have deteriorated in all the countries covered by this study. Unemployment rates have increased, large numbers of women are not in the labour force, and job security and social benefits have declined."
12:11:46 PM 
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Another government that seems to base its politics on violence is that of Israel. The country was created with violence and continues its policy of violence against the legitimate inhabitants of Palestine in the most barbaric way.
Independent: "Israel has dismissed continuing calls for an independent international inquiry into the beachfront explosion which killed seven members of a Palestinian family in Gaza last Friday after its own internal military investigation decided it was not responsible for the blast.
But the official interpretation was strongly challenged by a former Pentagon battle damage expert who has surveyed the scene of the beach explosion. He said yesterday that all the evidence points to a 155mm Israeli land-based artillery shell as its cause."
Haaretz: "Former prime minister Menachem Begin played a central role in a failed attempt to assassinate then-West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, with the objective of sabotaging the reparations agreement in the works with Israel, according to the journal of Eliezer Sudit, one of the men who carried out the attempted hit."
Living in perpetual war is a sure way to national destruction. In its present form Israel is not a sustainable nation.
11:34:19 AM
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WashingtonPost: "Violent crime in 2005 increased at the highest rate in 15 years, driven in large part by a surge of killings and other attacks in many Midwestern cities, the FBI reported yesterday.
The FBI's preliminary annual crime report showed an overall jump of 2.5 percent for violent offenses, including increases in homicide, robbery and assault.
Criminal justice experts said there were a number of possible explanations for the increase, including an influx of gangs into medium-size cities and a predicted surge in the number of inmates released from U.S. prisons. The jump could also represent a lingering effect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, some experts said, because governments at all levels have diverted resources away from traditional crime fighting in favor of anti-terrorism and homeland security programs."
An increase in violence usually has not one cause but several. But one important factor is the general level of justice and morality in the country at large. What can one expect in a country with a criminal president, a Republican party with a high percentage of felons and a government that only caters to the rich? Some people will adapt to the same level (or lack of) morality and justice that reigns supreme in the country.
AlterNet: "As a spinoff of the disturbing and disturbingly popular Left Behind book series (63 million customers can't be wrong...), the folks at Left Behind Games have created a truly sickening, kid-friendly version of their nightmarish Christianist vision (video). The game essentially has kids running around NYC killing those who don't subscribe to mega-church Christianity."
Double standards: "The prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case on Monday advised Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, that he would not be charged with any wrongdoing, effectively ending the nearly three-year criminal investigation that had at times focused intensely on Mr. Rove."
Guardian: "America has spent more on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than on all its foreign wars up to 1939, following the passage of a bill allowing $66bn (£35.8bn) in new funding for the Pentagon."
ACN: "US Army Colonel James Steele, who was involved in the Iran-Contras scandal along with international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles at his command, is now an advisor to death squads in Iraq."
Even Hillary Clinton is involved in schemes to prevent free speech.
CommonDreams: "The Take Back America conference, an annual event held in Washington DC this year from June 12-14, is supposed to be a venue for prominent progressives to gather and debate the major issues of our day. Their aim is to 'provide the nation with new vision, new ideas and new energy'. But choosing New York Senator and probable presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as a keynote speaker and then stifling dissent against her pro-war position hardly seems the stuff of a new vision for America."
The peace group CODEPINK was not allowed, contrary to previously made agreements, to air their views and were removed from the conference by security guards.
The mentality of violence within the US government is condemned all over the world, as well as by the majority of the American people.
Yahoo: "People in Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Russia rated America's continuing involvement in Iraq a worse problem than Iran and its nuclear ambitions, according to polling by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Views of U.S. troops in Iraq were even more negative in countries like Indonesia, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Pakistan."
EUObserver: "The EU has reiterated its calls for the closure of the US camp in Guantanamo Bay in the wake of the three prisoner suicides over the weekend."
11:11:57 AM
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Guardian: "US marines who were preparing for Nato-led war games in the Ukrainian region of Crimea left amid acrimony on Monday after weeks of protest against the military bloc left doubts as to whether the exercises would take place at all.
A Ukrainian navy spokesman, Volodymyr Bova, told the Interfax news agency that 100 marine reservists were flying back to the US airbase in Ramstein, Germany. They have been unable to complete their task of improving the plumbing and infrastructure of the Feodosiya military base on the Black Sea because of anti-Nato protests that in effect barricaded them into the health resort where they had been staying since their arrival over two weeks ago."
10:37:10 AM
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