"The body of an unidentified man, stuffed in a sack, lies at the intersection of Taft Avenue and Pedro Gil street in Manila Saturday, July 16, 2016. The sign left beside the body identifies him as a drug user and con man. JOVEN CAGANDE, file photo" Photo and caption from Philstar global
During a press conference in his home city of Davao, the former prosecutor told reporters that he had been compared to a “cousin of Hitler” by his critics.
“If Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have...,” he said, pausing and pointing to himself.
“Hitler massacred three million Jews ... there’s three million drug addicts. There are. I’d be happy to slaughter them....”
....Duterte has spent his first three months in office running a campaign to kill all involved in the rampant drugs trade, including alleged addicts, causing outrage from rights groups and foreign governments.
More than 3,500 alleged drug dealers and addicts have been killed, about a third of them in police operations but the majority by armed vigilante militias. Duterte has publicly encouraged civilians to kill addicts and said he will not prosecute police for extrajudicial executions. the Guardian
“You know my victims. I would like (them) to be all criminals to finish the problem of my country and save the next generation from perdition,” he said during the press conference early on Friday..."
The Pundit says that is time for the USA and other nations to do more than express concern. Let's start by cutting off all of the U.S.A.'s aid to the Phillipine government. The big question is: Do any leading politicians have the courage to defend the lives of drug users?
"...issues include severe lifelong breathing difficulties, corneal ulcers, skin disease, a screw-shaped tail which is linked to painful spine abnormalities, and the inability to give birth naturally."
"Following the release of new research data ..the British Veterinary Association (BVA) has issued the following statement: “Vets are reporting concerning trends in dog health and welfare linked to the rise in ownership of brachycephalic [short-muzzled] breeds, such as bulldogs, and we are unequivocal in the need for all those with roles to play – including vets, breeders, breed societies, the pet-buying public as well as others – to take action to combat the health problems that brachycephalic breeds experience due to extreme conformation. These issues include severe lifelong breathing difficulties, corneal ulcers, skin disease, a screw-shaped tail which is linked to painful spine abnormalities, and the inability to give birth naturally. As part of their pre-purchase research, prospective dog owners should consider the health harms perpetuated in dogs by purchasing brachycephalic breeds and choose a healthier alternative breed, or crossbreed, instead, and local veterinary practices are ideally placed to give this advice. Brachycephalic dogs should not be seen as cute or desirable, rather as dogs predisposed to a lifetime of poor health,..." Vets urge revision of breed standards to protect animal welfare British Veterinary Association
To paraphrase, simplify and summarize: Dogs with short muzzles such as boxers, bulldogs and pugs suffer from extreme health problems and pain and it is cruel to breed them and to support breeders by purchasing them. Talk to a veterinarian before buying such a dog.
I did not find a similar statement on the website for the American Veterinary Medical Association.
"Academy of Art President Elisa Stephens is flanked by former Mayor Willie Brown and current Mayor Ed Lee...Academy of Art University, one of the largest landowners in San Francisco, has had "consistent and repeated violations" of city land-use rules, yet the city has repeatedly refused to fine the for-profit school, even after it missed two compliance deadlines, according to a confidential letter by City Attorney Dennis Herrera." SF Gate
5 Corrupt Ways to Influence San Francisco Politics
The Pundit recommends "5 Corrupt Ways to Influence San Francisco Politics"
by Max Cherney for SF Weekly.
"According to the experts, much like political views, corruption is a spectrum. There are flat-out illegal acts, the most common of which is a politician or bureaucrat using his or her position for personal gain. Think of Leland Yee, the former state senator, who was convicted for taking bribes in exchange for passing legislation and greasing the wheels for phony contracts undercover feds pretended to want.
At the opposite end are activities that are, in the strictest sense, legal but can be viewed as unethical. It’s a realm where the likes of Willie Brown thrive and are the most difficult to pin down. So many legal loopholes remain in widespread use that city politicians can often avoid violating the law by simply going around it...."
After this introduction, the article then provides details on the "5 Corrupt Ways to Influence San Francisco Politics," which are:
A World Without Work is Coming – It Could be Utopia or It Could be Hell
While debating politics on-line I was surprised to discover the amount of hostility towards even discussing the merits of a shorter work week. The
article "A world without work is coming – it could be utopia or it could be hell" by
Ryan Avent for the Guardian shows why we need to change how we think about work.
Some excerpts:
"...Some day, probably not in our lifetimes but perhaps not long after, machines will be able to do most of the tasks that people can. At that point, a truly workless world should be possible. If everyone, not just the rich, had robots at their beck and call, then such powerful technology would free them from the need to submit to the realities of the market to put food on the table.
Of course, we then have to figure out what to do not only with ourselves but with one another. Just as a lottery cheque does not free the winner from the shackles of the human condition, all-purpose machine intelligence will not magically allow us all to get along. And what is especially tricky about a world without work is that we must begin building the social institutions to survive it long before the technological obsolescence of human workers actually arrives...
... The digital revolution has helped supercharge globalisation, automated routine jobs, and allowed small teams of highly skilled workers to manage tasks that once required scores of people. The result has been a glut of labour that economies have struggled to digest.
Labour markets have coped the only way they are able: workers needing jobs have little option but to accept dismally low wages. Bosses shrug and use people to do jobs that could, if necessary, be done by machines. Big retailers and delivery firms feel less pressure to turn their warehouses over to robots when there are long queues of people willing to move boxes around for low pay. Law offices put off plans to invest in sophisticated document scanning and analysis technology because legal assistants are a dime a dozen. People continue to staff checkout counters when machines would often, if not always, be just as good. Ironically, the first symptoms of a dawning era of technological abundance are to be found in the growth of low-wage, low-productivity employment. And this mess starts to reveal just how tricky the construction of a workless world will be. The most difficult challenge posed by an economic revolution is not how to come up with the magical new technologies in the first place; it is how to reshape society so that the technologies can be put to good use while also keeping the great mass of workers satisfied with their lot in life..."
The Guardian
The Guardian is a liberal leaning British newspaper, but it has an online version for the USA that is the best source of news that we have found. They thoroughly cover many important domestic (USA) and foreign stories, including many ignored by the mainstream press in the USA. Their political lean is obvious, but they report the facts completely and without bias.
Last minute update: This message was received from our town's City Clerk: "Thank you for your email and call today Mr. Freeman. Our website will be updated tomorrow with the list of nominees and link to candidate statements. The City’s website should be updated by tomorrow." We're impressed.
Because of the lack of complete and accessible information on the election I was initially given the wrong impression that the only local contest was the one ballot measure listed on the city's election information website. Actually, there is also a City Council race. It was nearly impossible to discern that fact without extensive on-line searching.
Hidden or inaccessible on-line information is a useless waste of staff time. Incomplete information is misleading. Only complete election information is useful for voters.
We recently moved and our updated voter registration has not been processed. We wanted to go on-line to find out what would be on my local ballot.
We tried to go to our town's website. Information on the one local ballot measure was available, but no information about the candidates was available. The link to "City Measures" had information ABOUT the current ballot measure. The link to "City Candidates" only had information FOR candidates.
I then tried to the County website. There is a function that allows one to enter their registration data and then get the information. Because my registration has not been processed, I could not use that function.
I carefully searched the site and could not find any ballot information.
I called and spent over eleven minutes on the phone with two or three different staff people. After some trial and error by the staff (who struggled almost as much as I did) I was finally directed to the information I needed.
These are the steps required to find what is on the ballot in your town in Contra Costa without being registered.
1.Go to the Contra Costa County webpage. Note that no links to election information are visible on the home page.
2. Click on the pull-down menu under "Government" and see a list of departments.
3. If you have experience in local government you might guess that the "Clerk-Recorder" handles elections. (Similar titles are also used for the clerks that register marriages and property transfers) Click on the link for "Clerk-Recorder" Or, scroll down all the way to the bottom of this page and find the link for "Elections" under "County Links." (I'm not sure whether that link was there before I called to complain)
4. Click on the > symbol adjacent to the word Elections to go to the "Contra Costa County Clerk-Outreach-Recorder-Elections" web page. While there, check out the nice big photo of the Clerk Recorder.
5. Click on the link labeled "November 8, 2016 Presidential General Election" (We think it should simply say "November 8, 2016 General Election" so people know that it has local information.)
6. On the "November 8, 2016 Presidential General Election" page, DO NOT click on the link "Information about the Candidates." It lists the candidates for State offices only with no indication that there are also local races.
7. Scroll down to a colored area near the bottom of the page labeled "Offices" and "Print" at the top. (There is no indication that this is where the links to candidate information is located. These links need to be labeled.)
8. Click on the link labeled "City."
9. Scroll down to find your city and click on the link for "Candidates."
10. Congratulations you have found the list of City Council Candidates in just ten steps!
11. Go back to the link labeled "November 8, 2016 Presidential General Election" and scroll down to the colored area labeled "Offices" and "Print" at the top to see the links for School Board and other local races.
Neither websites makes clear that some "candidate" information is ABOUT candidates, and some of the information is FOR Candidates. The difference should be made clear by labeling the pages and links as either FOR or ABOUT candidates.
Links to ballot information should be right on the home page of both the City and County.
Prioritizing information and making it easily accessible is a skill that most Information Technology workers do not have. Government workers, who are more familiar with the workings of government and their employer's website than ordinary folks, are also not skilled at determining whether information is easily accessible on a website. We recommend using ordinary citizens to test the website and using information accessibility professionals to guide these decisions.
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