Satellite television has reached even conservative parts of the Arab world, where hundreds of programs are now available. The Middle East’s MBC-4 began airing The Oprah Winfrey Show more than four years ago, and the program now reaches about 6 million viewers in the Arab world each day.
Though aimed at an American audience, the program has brought formerly taboo topics — like reproduction or homosexuality — into discussion. Worldfocus correspondent Kristen Gillespie reports from Jordan on the Oprah effect in the Middle East.
The decades long conflict in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao almost came to an end last year but since the collapse of a proposed peace deal between the government and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front the war rages on. Now peace in the Muslim heartland seems further away than ever, as Al Jazeera’s Marga Ortigas reports from the island of Mindanao.
At least 50 people are feared killed after a series of attacks on farming communities in southern Sudan. The Lord’s Resistance Army, led by accused war criminal Joseph Kony, is being blamed for the violence. As Paul Allen reports, thousands of Sudanese have fled their farms, fearing the attackers, armed with machetes, will return.
I don’t really remember meeting Danny. It might have been in a class or more likely on the deck of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity that we both joined on the campus of Stanford University. We might have been drunk at the time. There is no starting point for our friendship, it seems to have been eternal. We both played the violin, he much better than I. I do know that he introduced me to klezmer and Balkan folk music and I introduced him to Colombian cumbias and Cuban son. We shared a love of politics and I would write an article or two on Latin America for the magazine he founded The Stanford Commentary. We volunteered for Amnesty International letter writing campaigns. We went to Dead shows, played IM soccer and frolicked through all the joys of life on The Farm, as Stanford is affectionately known.
Danny would go onto work as a journalist for The Wall Street Journal and I would go on to work as an equity analyst for Wall Street firms. Life would take us in very separate directions both of us doing things we loved. Keeping track of Danny was never easy. He traveled constantly but the advent of email in the mid-1990s and his rise as global correspondent facilitated keeping in touch. (more…)
In March of 2000, during the last days of the Clinton administration, the EPA decided coal ash was a hazardous waste. Then, two months later, it flipped. If the EPA had stuck to its guns, the Kingston Coal Ash disaster in Tennessee might have been averted. Now, momentum is building to federally regulate coal ash. Will the EPA make the same mistake twice?
The Sri Lankan military says it has captured what may be the Tamil Tigers main operations centre. But even as the Sri Lankan military talk about key military victories, there are worries that this will not bring everlasting peace to the island nation. Al Jazeera’s Tony Birtley reports from a Sri Lankan army base at Ambepussa.
The Workforce Fairness Institute has unveiled a new Internet-only ad against the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). The ad is a 90 second spot.
The Workforce Fairness Institute (WFI) claims that it “is an organization committed to educating voters, employers, employees and citizens about issues affecting the workplace.” The WFI is but one of the groups leading the charge against the EFCA. Opponents of the EFCA are spending millions of dollars to block passage with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spending 10 million dollars alone.
The Employee Free Choice Act would establish the right to negotiate in good faith with employers after a simple majority approve though a “card check” procedure. Only after the contract is ratified through a secret ballot do workers become union members. The New York Times in late December came out for the EFCA in an editorial stating that:
The measure is vital legislation and should not be postponed. By giving employees a bigger say in compensation issues, unions also help to establish corporate norms, the absence of which has contributed to unjustifiable disparities between executive pay and rank-and-file pay. There is a strong argument that the slack labor market of a recession actually makes unions all the more important.
True, but getting this passed is going to be a brutal war.
Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand who serves as U.S. Representative to New York’s Twentieth Congressional District, which stretches across the upstate counties of Saratoga, Dutchess, Columbia, Rensselaer, Washington, Warren, Delaware, Greene, Essex and Otsego, is reportedly the choice of Governor David Paterson to fill the Senate seat vacancy left by the departure of Hillary Clinton for Foggy Bottom. From WPIX News:
PIX NEWS is being told that Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand is the reported choice of Governor David Paterson to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton. Two Congressional sources say members of the New York delegation have been invited to join Governor Paterson for the announcement in Albany at noon tomorrow.
Two members of that delegration, agreeing to speak without attribution, told reporter Marvin Scott that the Governor has telephoned New York’s Democratic members of Congress for their views after Caroline Kennedy withdrew herself from consideration. One of the contenders, longterm Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney canceled a scheduled appearance on “PIX News Closeup” tomorrow because of a “conflict,” which she did not disclose. She too will be in Albany. According to the sources, Gillibrand, now in her second congressional term, was favored by Secretary of State Clinton herself. Paterson has been under pressure to select a woman.
Glenn Beck is a tad upset for it seems that in the do-over of the flubbed Presidential Oath, President Obama didn’t swear or affirm on a Bible. Mr. Beck thinks that this is a departure from custom. It’s not. At least three Presidents did not swear or affirm on a Bible (actually they have all sworn except for Franklin Pierce who affirmed). Those who did not use a Bible are John Quincy Adams, Chester A. Arthur and Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt, it should be noted, did use a Bible in 1901 but did use one in 1905.
To swear or affirm the Presidential Oath on a Bible is not required to become President Constitutionally-speaking.