Red Terror Museum, Ethiopa

On December 20, 2014December 18, 2014 By Rick McIn ethics, government, travelLeave a comment

The Ethiopian Red Terror, or Qey Shibir … was a violent political campaign in Ethiopia and Eritrea that most visibly took place after Communist Mengistu Haile Mariam achieved control of the Derg, the military junta, on 3 February 1977.

It is estimated that between 30,000 and 500,000 people were killed over the course of the Red Terror. …

Mengistu was found guilty of genocide in absentia and was sentenced to life in prison in January 2007. After his conviction, Zimbabwe, where he received sanctuary due to friendship with Robert Mugabe, said it would not extradite him. …

The Red Terror Martyrs Memorial Museum in Addis is the #1 tourist attraction.

It’s sobering.

The museum is well laid out and incredibly moving. Nothing more so than the walls of photos and names of just some of the estimated half a million killed under the Derg, or the display cabinets filled with human remains dug out of mass graves. Some of the skulls and other bones are displayed alongside a photo of the victim and personal artefacts they had on them when they died. …

Lonely Planet

There’s very little reason, aside from this museum, for tourists to spend many days in Addis Ababa. It’s a dusty construction nightmare right now.

I’d like to return some day, but only after the new Addis Ababa Light Rail opens.

It looks great. Addis Ababa’s rail project keeps Ethiopia on track for transformation.

Even more ambitious is the new Grand Ethiopian Renaissance dam. Ethiopia’s Nile dam project signals its intention to become an African power.

I wish them luck.

Net Neutrality – Explained by Common Craft

On December 12, 2014 By Rick McIn economics, government, internetLeave a comment

Net Neutrality is far, far better for you and me than the alternatives.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Obama 2nd worst President all time

On November 29, 2014December 1, 2014 By Rick McIn economics, government1 Comment

I was an early fan of Barack Obama. He gave me … HOPE.

obama-1

His Presidency has been deeply disappointing to me.

Neil Macdonald, CBC News:

Six years after he assumed power, nearly 120 of his promises remain unfulfilled, according to the Pulitzer-prize-winning website Politifact. For example, he promised to “hold accountable” the financial firms whose criminal negligence — let’s dispense with euphemisms — nearly destroyed the economy in 2008.

Obama’s attorney-general eventually decided not to charge a single Wall Street executive, fearing the “collateral consequences” might be too hard on shareholders and office workers who might lose their jobs if a corporate collapse resulted.

Obama also promised a foreclosure prevention fund to protect homeowners threatened by Wall Street’s behaviour, and a law allowing judges to modify people’s mortgages as the vultures descended. Never happened.

Obama has not enacted protections for striking workers, or made it easier to unionize, or required employers to provide at least seven days of paid sick leave per year, all of which he promised.

He has not raised the federal minimum wage. …

CBC – ANALYSIS – How Barack Obama’s presidency has come undone

Nice guy. Could have. Should have done better.

He should have done the opposite of GW Bush, not continued as a weaker version of the same.

He’ll be a far, far better exPresident.

Upsides?

Obamacare was a slight improvement to an extremely expensive and inefficient Health Care system.

He did bring down the deficit GW Bush left him.

He did manage to pull most troops out of the Middle East … and dodged the Red Line bluff in Syria. But the current military adventures in the region will turn out to be a huge mistake.

USA should QUIT the Middle East completely aside from working with Nuclear powers Pakistan and Israel.

Still, he should have gone stronger to the left. Instead, history will judge him a weak Republican.

USA spent $10 trillion in the Middle East

On November 27, 2014November 20, 2014 By Rick McIn economics, ethics, GOP USA, governmentLeave a comment

Are U.S. taxpayers getting good value for that expenditure?

NO. The USA should QUIT the Middle East.

The U.S. gets only around 10% of its net oil and natural gas from the region.

David Vine:

With the launch of a new US-led war in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State (IS), the United States has engaged in aggressive military action in at least 13 countries in the Greater Middle East since 1980. In that time, every American president has invaded, occupied, bombed, or gone to war in at least one country in the region. …

As in prior military operations in the Greater Middle East, US forces fighting IS have been aided by access to and the use of an unprecedented collection of military bases. …

In the Persian Gulf alone, the US has major bases in every country save Iran. …

Members of Congress spend billions of dollars on base construction and maintenance every year in the region, but ask few questions about where the money is going, why there are so many bases, and what role they really serve. By one estimate, the United States has spent $10 trillion protecting Persian Gulf oil supplies over the past four decades. …

On their own, the existence of these bases has helped generate radicalism and anti-American sentiment. …

Mother Jones – America Still Has Hundreds of Military Bases Worldwide. Have They Made Us Any Safer?

David Vine, associate professor of anthropology at American University in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Island of Shame: The Secret History of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia.

The USA has about an $18 trillion dollar debt. Canada, by comparison, will run a surplus budget this year,

All in the Family – far, far ahead of its time

On November 26, 2014November 26, 2014 By Rick McIn ethics, GOP USA, government, humour, TVLeave a comment

All in the Family is an American sitcom that was originally broadcast on the CBS television network from January 12, 1971, to April 8, 1979. …

Produced by Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin and starring Carroll O’Connor, Jean Stapleton, Rob Reiner, and Sally Struthers, All in the Family revolves around the life of a working class bigot and his family.

The show broke ground in its depiction of issues previously considered unsuitable for U.S. network television comedy, such as racism, homosexuality, women’s liberation, rape, miscarriage, abortion, breast cancer, the Vietnam War, menopause, and impotence. Through depicting these controversial issues, the series became arguably one of television’s most influential comedic programs, as it injected the sitcom format with more realistic and topical conflicts.

The show ranked number-one in the yearly Nielsen ratings from 1971 to 1976. …

This is one of my favourite scenes.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Norman Lear, age-92, just published his autobiography – Even this I get to experience.

Lear is extremely liberal, the opposite of Archie. Actually, Normal Lear had Maude, Bea Arthur, represent his personal views.

In some ways Archie still symbolizes the old white male conservative dinosaur. Carroll O’Connor died 2001.

Archie Bunker’s ideas should have died with him.

Band Aid 30 – Do They Know It’s Christmas?

On November 17, 2014 By Rick McIn ethics, government, musicLeave a comment

I bought the single on iTunes. 100% of that revenue is supposed to go to the cause.

Band Aid 30 is the 2014 incarnation of the charity supergroup Band Aid. The group was announced on 10 November 2014 by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure.[1] As in previous incarnations, the group covered the track Do They Know It’s Christmas?, written in 1984 by Geldof and Ure, this time to raise money towards the Ebola crisis in Western Africa. …

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

As Bono said, it’s not for Ebola, it’s to prevent the NEXT Ebola.

Obama on net neutrality

On November 12, 2014November 11, 2014 By Rick McIn economics, government, internetLeave a comment

Obama is saying the right things. But so often his right words do not translate into right action.

Let’s wait and see.

President Obama … urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to take up the strongest possible rules to protect net neutrality, the principle that says Internet service providers (ISPs) should treat all internet traffic equally.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

world poverty dropping fast

On November 1, 2014October 26, 2014 By Rick McIn economics, good news, government, things getting betterLeave a comment

In 1820 the vast majority of people lived in extreme poverty and only a tiny elite enjoyed higher standards of living.

Economic growth over the last 200 years completely transformed our world and poverty fell continuously over the whole 2 last centuries. This is even more remarkable when we consider that the population increased 7-fold over the same time (which in itself is a consequence of increasing living standards and decreasing mortality – especially of infants and children – around the world). …

Even in 1981 more than 50% of the world population lived in absolute poverty – this is now down to about 20%. This is still a large number of people but the change is happening incredibly fast and for our present world the data tells us that poverty is now falling more quickly than ever before in world history. The first of the Millenium Development Goals set by the UN was to halve the population living in absolute poverty between 1990 and 2015. Rapid economic growth meant that this goal – arguably the most important – was achieved (5 years ahead of time) in 2010.

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