Unemployed told to leave Ireland in desperate move to slash welfare costs. ANY THOUGHTS PAUL??

Ireland is asking its citizens to leave the country if they can't find a job in a desperate bid to slash welfare costs. The Irish government has sent letters to approximately 6,000 unemployed people suggesting they should take jobs in other European countries in an effort to reduce unemployment benefits, the Financial Times has reported.

Dublin defended the move insisting that the positions are voluntary and no one is being forced to leave the country. Ireland is close to becoming the first euro zone nation to make a successful exit from its international bailout program after the country's finances collapsed in the 2008 financial crisis.

Unemployment has eased in recent months, falling to its lowest level in four years in November at 12.5 per cent, but youth unemployment remains a problem. Overall, one in four Irish under 25 is still unemployed.

Yemeni Parliament Votes to Ban US Drone Attacks

On Thursday, a US drone fired several missiles into a convoy of vehicles traveling to a wedding party in central Yemen, killing at least 17 people. Since that time "Lawmakers have voted to ban drone strikes in Yemen," the official Saba news agency reported after the parliament held a session on Sunday.

The legislators stressed "the importance of protecting all citizens from any aggression" and "the importance of preserving the sovereignty of Yemeni air space," Saba said.

The strike triggered protests across Yemen. Relatives of the people killed in the attack blocked roads to protest against the deadly incident, calling on the government to adopt measures to halt the drone strikes. They also demanded an official apology as well as compensation. "If the government fails to stop American planes from... bombing the people of Yemen, then it has no rule over us," Yemeni tribal chief Ahmad al-Salmani said on Saturday.

Washington has stepped up its assassination drone operations in Yemen over the past few years. According to the Washington-based think tank the New America Foundation, US drone attacks in the Arab country almost tripled last year, surging from 18 to 53.

Israel opens dam, flooding Gaza Strip with rainwater

Adding insult to injury, Israel has opened the Wadi Sofa Dam east of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, flooding dozens of houses and leaving hundreds of people homeless. Rafah City Mayor Issa Nashar confirmed the incident on Sunday, saying, "Israel has indeed opened the dam which led to drowning the neighbouring areas with accumulated rain water up to 1 metre deep."

This incident came after an unprecedented storm, called Alexa by meteorologists, hit the Middle East causing a humanitarian disaster in the region's most vulnerable areas. In the Gaza Strip, at least one person is reported to have died as a result of the freak weather conditions and nearly 5,000 are taking shelter in community facilities while their homes are uninhabitable.

According to Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, the rainfall led to a lot of excess water which couldn't drain away, so "the Israeli authorities resorted to discharging the excess water into the Gaza Strip." -Because hey, their Palestinian, so they should be used to this sort of thing right? WTF?!

First Scotland, now Catalonia?

Catalonia’s four pro-independence parties, which hold a majority in the regional parliament, announced Thursday that the rich industrial Spanish province will hold a referendum on whether to gain greater autonomy or even total independence from the country’s central government.

The referendum in Catalonia will be held less than a month after a similar vote in Scotland, which will hold it on September 18. Critics of the Spanish government have noted that London agreed to the Scottish vote on self-determination, while Madrid is reluctant to do the same for Catalonia. 

On November 9 residents will be asked two questions: "Do you want Catalonia to be a state?" and "Do you want that state to be independent?"

The former question was added for those Catalans who seek to change Spain into a federation, with Catalonia forming part of it. According to a Metroscopia poll in newspaper El Pais last month, 46 percent of Catalans favor separatism versus 42 percent who wish to remain within Spain. The support for greater autonomy, however, is very strong.

Just minutes after the announcement Spanish Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon rejected the idea, saying it would be unconstitutional.

"The vote will not be held," he said.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy spoke out later in the day, saying his government will not allow the Catalan referendum to happen.

"As prime minister I have sworn to uphold the constitution and the law and, because of this, I guarantee that this referendum will not happen," he stressed. "Any discussion or debate on this is out of the question."

But in Catalonia pro-independence moods are not withered by Madrid’s rebuke. They say the central government would have little options, if it does want to stop the referendum.

"They will have to show how they are going to prevent a vote from happening,” Elisenda Paluzie, professor of economics at the University of Barcelona, told RT. “What are they going to do? Will they send the police to the polling stations? It's up to them to show what kind of democracy they support."

Uighurs protest in China; 16 killed

For those of you not familiar with the situation, The Uighur people of China inhabit the Xinjiang province in the far west. If your familiar with the whole "Free Tibet" movement, this is essentially the same situation, where China arbitrarily decided to take over a neighboring country blitzkrieg-style but no one knew or cared 'cause the victims weren't white (like they were back in Poland). Instead of practicing Buddhism and speaking some Indian language, these folks are Muslim and speak Turkic. It's also interesting to note that this province is also where China may or may not be honing it's drone operating skills against insurgent members of it's own population.

Original story, via Reuters here.

"[A]n island of refugees in a world of crazy people".

The president of Uruguay, José Mujica, was recently profiled in the Guardian for his unique leadership style. If anyone could claim to be leading by example in an age of austerity, it is José Mujica, who has forsworn a state palace in favour of a farmhouse, donates the vast bulk of his salary to social projects, flies economy class, and drives an old Volkswagen Beetle. Since becoming leader of Uruguay in 2010, he has won plaudits worldwide for living within his means, decrying excessive consumption and pushing ahead with policies on same-sex marriage, abortion and cannabis legalization that have reaffirmed Uruguay as the most socially liberal country in Latin America.

The president is a former member of the Tupamaros guerrilla group, which was notorious in the early 1970s for bank robberies, kidnappings and distributing stolen food and money among the poor not unlike Robin Hood. He was shot by police six times and spent 14 years in a military prison, much of it in dungeon-like conditions.

"I'm just sick of the way things are. We're in an age in which we can't live without accepting the logic of the market," he said. "Contemporary politics is all about short-term pragmatism. We have abandoned religion and philosophy … What we have left is the automatization of doing what the market tells us."

At the United Nations' Rio+20 conference on sustainable development last year, he railed against the "blind obsession" to achieve growth through greater consumption. But, with Uruguay's economy ticking along at a growth rate of more than 3%, Mujica – somewhat grudgingly, it seems – accepts he must deliver material expansion. "I'm president. I'm fighting for more work and more investment because people ask for more and more," he said. "I am trying to expand consumption but to diminish unnecessary consumption … I'm opposed to waste – of energy, or resources, or time. We need to build things that last. That's an ideal, but it may not be realistic because we live in an age of accumulation."

When he was asked for a solution to this contradiction, the president admitted he didn't have the answers, but the former Marxist did say that the search for a solution must be political. "We can almost recycle everything now. If we lived within our means – by being prudent – the 7 billion people in the world could have everything they needed. Global politics should be moving in that direction," he said. "But we think as people and countries, not as a species."

Over the course of their interview Mujica and his wife chat fondly about meetings with Che Guevara, and the president guesses he is probably the last leader in power to have met Mao Zedong, but he has mixed feelings about the recent revolts and protests in Brazil, Turkey, Egypt and elsewhere. "The world will always need revolution. That doesn't mean shooting and violence. A revolution is when you change your thinking. Confucianism and Christianity were both revolutionary," he said.

But he is cynical about demonstrations organized by social networks that quickly dissolve before they have a capacity to build anything lasting. "The protesters will probably finish up working for multinationals and dying of modern diseases. I hope that I am wrong about that."

Red Moon Rising!

So China just landed a rover on the moon, not that anyone particularly cares. Didn't we do that with actual men like 50 years ago? -Better late than never I guess.

The rover, named Yutu or "Jade Rabbit" weighs in at 260 lbs, and has a top speed of 660 feet an hour. It's only expected to last about 3 months while the landing module should hold out for about a year. Does anybody remember the Olympics back in 08' when China wouldn't allow any of the American networks do their own broadcast of the opening ceremonies so that they could "digitally enhance" the picture for the rest of the world? (Read: Photoshop in a crap-load of more fireworks even though they invented the stuff in the first place and are still pretty much the world's sole supplier) Well, the state media didn't let the folks back home watch the actual landing either (in case they screwed up royally) opting instead to replay an animation of what was supposed to happen instead. 

Impressive right? I'm pretty sure that was generated on the same graphics card that was used for the Nintendo 64 back in 1997. Oddly enough, that was the same year that we put our first rover Sojourner on Mars. Check that first picture again. Notice any similarities? Na, Probably just a coincidence.

Original story here.

"Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!"

In case you missed it (I know I did) it has been snowing in Egypt for the first time in over 100 years.

Indeed the entire Middle East is in the midst of the worst snowstorm it has experienced in more than 50 years. As a result the UN has expressed concern "for refugees caught in the cold, but many families are ineligible for help because they are not registered with the UN, according to Al Jazeera. Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, Israel, was forced to close its doors briefly after snow clogged its main highway." More remarkable images from Instagram can be found here.

Jang Song-thaek is Jang Song-DEAD!

In what is widely viewed as the most assertive political move of his sophomore political career, Kim Jong-un, has executed his second-in-command uncle (and right-hand man in the picture above) after dismissing him from his post at the party earlier in the week for "committ[ing] criminal acts baffling the imagination and they did tremendous harm to our party and revolution."

Moral of the story: Remember those kids in in high school who were obsessed with "The Matrix", and looked like they hadn't been outside in weeks? You know? The goth ones you always made a point of being nice (or at very least indifferent) to as they were always wearing trench coats, and looked like they could go postal at any minute? The ones with "hit lists"? -The same principle applies in North Korea, only in North Korean the kids you've got to watch out for wear Meineke jumpsuits and have lunch lady hair.

Original story, via RT.

"Hide yo' kids, hide yo' wife!"

China just joined the nuclear sub club!*

*too bad they only launched their first carrier last year...

The Most Important Labor Strike in the World Is Happening Right Now

Millions of workers across Indonesia are joining a national strike this week to press for a higher minimum wage and universal health coverage. This is actually a big deal for Americans, not that any of us are paying a lick of attention.  

Why does a giant strike in Indonesia matter? Because the United States stands to benefit from the rise of a global middle class that can buy high-end American goods and services, and we also stand to benefit as the cost of labor rises in developing countries, making American workers more competitive. 

Indonesia is not just any developing country. It's the fourth most populous country in the world (after China, India, and the U.S.), and it's now a big sweatshop for global corporations. The country's minimum wage is about $200 a month, leaving vast swaths of Indonesia's workforce in poverty. 

But Indonesia's middle class is also growing by leaps and bounds. The number of Indonesian households with more than $10,000 in disposable income has doubled in just the past seven years -- and is projected to double again by the end of this decade. Meanwhile, American exports to Indonesia have nearly quadrupled in the past decade. 

Strong gains by organized labor could help to greatly accelerate the rise of Indonesia's middle class. Over the past century, unions have been instrumental in creating shared middle class prosperity in country after country, including -- of course -- here in the United States. 

When a country has a growing middle class, lots of good things start to happen in a virtuous cycle. Middle class people tend to demand more investments in education, transportation, environmental protection, and the social safety net. And they tend to push back against corruption and the arbitrary abuse of power, agitating for stronger democracy.  

When countries undergo this kind of transformation, they are less likely to remain part of the global sweatshop economy. Just think about what happened in places like South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore -- which all used to be centers of low-wage labor. In some respects, China is clearly on this path, with a fast growing middle class. Chinese companies already are outsourcing to cheaper labor markets like Indonesia and Vietnam. 

The United States doesn't have to be a passive bystander to the global struggle to raise labor standards. The U.S. Department of Labor has a bureau that expressly exists to foster labor rights worldwide, and the U.S. has a variety of other mechanisms to push this agenda, most notably trade rules that stipulate compliance with labor rights. The U.S. could also do much more to bolster the International Labor Organization, which promotes higher labor standards globally. 

Of course, though, the United States has too often been on the wrong side of the global labor fight, backing multinational corporations with a short-sighted focus on cheap labor. 

We need to think long term, and see strong labor unions in places like Indonesia as the key to building a global middle class that will create more prosperity for Americans. 

Originally found on the Wall Street Journal's Blog

Crunch Time!

This might not be especially relevant to international law, but I thought it worth noting that when the government does shut down, not everything shuts down in equal measure. Looks like keeping the lights on at the State Department (international law?) is a top priority: Slate -(the raw numbers in the Washington Post)

Are Artists and Journalists the Enemy Sympathizers Our Government Takes Them For?

In this short article Baraa Shiban, a well-known and highly respected Yemeni anti-drone activist describes his detention and interrogation by UK officials on Monday under that country's "anti-terrorism" law at Gatwick Airport, where he had traveled to speak at an event. He was held for an hour and a half and repeatedly questioned about his anti-drone work and political views regarding human rights abuses in Yemen.

The legal charity Reprieve, which Shiban works for also noted that on Monday:

The Obama Administration once again denied a visa to Pakistani lawyer Shahzad Akbar, who represents family members of victims killed by US drones and is suing the US government, alleging that the drone kills are illegal. As Reprieve put it, by denying Akbar a visa, the Obama Administration succeeded in "preventing him from speaking in [C]ongress on the CIA drone programme next week", to which he had been invited by House members to testify. Reprieve added: "Before 2010 Mr. Akbar travelled regularly to the US. It was not until 2011, when he began representing victims of CIA drone strikes, that Mr. Akbar began having significant difficulty getting a US visa."

Also on Monday:

The Libyan-American rapper Khaled Ahmed, better known by his stage name "Khaled M", was removed from an airplane in the US without any explanation. During the civil war in Libya, he was hailed in US media circles for using his music to protest against the Ghadaffi regime. As his Twitter feed makes clear, this was part of ongoing harassment he experiences when flying at the hands of his own government.

The previous Friday:

Sarah Abdurrahman, an American Muslim and producer of the NPR program "On the Media", was detained for 6 hours at the US border in Niagra Falls when returning from a vacation in Canada with her family (all US citizens). She then reported on her own experiences as well as the systemic border harassment of US Muslims by their own government.

So what are we to make of these and other incidents? 

I think it's important to note that these were not isolated events, but rather small, incremental increases in the amount of intimidation which the authorities have been exerting both here in the U.S. and abroad.

For example last month authorities in the UK detained David Miranda, the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald for 9 hours under the same pretext and last year the United State denied a visa to filmmaker Muhammad Danish Qasim. A Pakistani student at Iqra University's Media Science, he released a short film entitled "The Other Side", which highlighted the pain and havoc wreaked on surviving children and other relatives of drone victims. The visa denial meant he was barred from receiving the Audience Award for Best International Film at the 2012 National Film Festival For Talented Youth, held annually in Seattle, Washington.

NSA Surveillance and Cancer

Yesterday several Heads of State addressed the U.N. General Assembly in New York, and as you may or may not be aware, much drama ensued, particularly between the United States (Barack Obama) and Brazil (Dilma Rousseff) who canceled the only state visit that President Obama has offered this year after it was revealed that the United States has been spying on not only on the classified presidential communications of Roussseff's office, but also on key Brazilian corporate interests. She summed it up the country's attitude last week by saying “The Brazilian government is determined to obtain clarifications from the US government about any possible violations committed ... If the facts in the report are confirmed, then it’s evident that the motive for the ... espionage is not security or to fight terrorism, but economic and strategic interests.” to which National Security Advisor Susan Rice told the Brazilian foreign minister that his country had a right to be angry, admitting that the spying “raise[s] legitimate questions for our friends and allies about how these capabilities are employed.”

You can check out the full video (and transcript) of her ripping the Obama Administration a new one here, as well as Glenn Greenwald's (the source for all of Edward Snowden's document leaks) elaboration and tear-down of the NSA's other international activities and "Independent Review Board" here.

So how does cancer figure into the picture? 

In 2009 it was revealed that Rousseff had been diagnoses with a form Lymphoma (a cancer in the lymphatic system) not unlike the thyroid cancer that Argentinian President  Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was mis-diagnosed with last December, the cancer of Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo,  former Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, or Cuba's Fidel Castro. That's one helluva lot of cancer, and one hell of coincidence! Do any of America's allies have cancer in such concentrations? -(Coincidentally of the same or similar varieties and in relatively short periods of time.) 

Ever heard of Polonium poisoning? -The presumed weapon of choice for both Israel's Mossad and the Russia's government/organized crime.

How come South American heads-of-state never seem to die of old age?

The Syrian Abyss

"If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."

-Friedrich Nietzsche

A short article on what America's intervention in Syrian at this late stage in the "game" actually says about us as a nation. It questions the moral rationale that has "justified" our inaction up to this point while 125,000 Syrians (largely civilian non-combatants) have been killed and contrasts it with the outrage that has been expressed as of late over the use of chemical weapons on relatively small portion of that same population. 

-seem rather arbitrary to anyone else?

Also questioned is the effectiveness of any actions taken in behalf of a larger "Responsibility to Protect" where involvement is promised to be limited.

As a strict Libertarian, I've always found military actions taken outside of a immediately defensive nature to be completely counter-productive.

~Link to original article