General Political/News Discussion

...I'm making this thread purely because I think I'm going to be sick. If you haven't heard:

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has won a referendum on lifting term limits to allow him to stay in power as long as he keeps winning elections, electoral authorities said on Sunday.

Electoral officials said the former soldier had won 54 percent of votes in favor of the constitutional amendment in the OPEC nation.

I don't know if anyone else has been following this, but American Captain Richard Phillips of the Maersk Alabama has been freed from his captors and appears to be unharmed. He has already had the opportunity to call his wife, and he's currently on the USS Bainbridge- I think. That's a little confusing, since it seems like he was transferred to the USS Boxer to receive medical treatment and clearance, and I'm not sure if he was then transferred back to the Bainbridge or not.

Three of the four pirates were killed by military sharpshooters. The fourth, a sixteen year old, was apparently on board the Bainbridge after jumping onto the Navy ship the other day that was providing food and batteries to the lifeboat. He may face charges.

While this story has a relatively happy ending, it should be noted that there's approximately 200 hostages of many different nationalities still being held by Somali pirates, and this is an occurence that has been going on since 1991, when the economy in Somalia collapsed. Hopefully, the media attention on this problem won't disappear with the removal of the American threat, because the international threat is still very much there.

It's important to understand, though, that the piracy is not the evil it's being portrayed by, most of the time. This is a country that hasn't had centralized leadership or an economy since 1991. Piracy and terrorism are the two thriving "economies" in Somalia, and to me? Piracy seems to be the lesser evil. In addition, many of these pirates are more like modern day Robin Hoods than selfish criminals; they do not horde their profits, but spread it throughout Somalia, or at least their tribes. Particularly worth nothing are two problems that underscore the motivations for this sort of thing: the first is that foreign countries have been illegally fishing in Somalian waters. The seafood that should be bringing money into Somalia and feeding its starving residents is instead ending up in restaurants in Paris and London. The second is more recent, and much more disturbing. Since the turn on the century, European ships have been dumping containers into Somalian water. The first indication that there was something seriously wrong came around 2003, when those Somalians nearest to the coast started to report rashes, nausea, birth defects. Following the Indonesian tsunami in December of 2005, the crates that the European ships had been dumping began washing up on Somalian shores. Hundreds of Somalians died; the containers held nuclear waste.

In order to eliminate piracy, the international community can not simply police the waters. We need to provide structure to Somalia, and aid. We need to stop turning their shores into our personal dumps.

This is a kind of sobering article, and I don't know how valid it is, but I'm going to link to a claim that Israel's policies toward Ethiopian Jews are racist. Before I get into a discussion of the article's merits, I will point out the source is in the UAE, so it's obviously got its own biases. I think the conclusions reached are a little severe and over the top, but the policy involved - which isn't really open to interpretation; they either do it or they don't - is questionable at best. End of the day, though? It's just sort of depressing that Israel apparently doesn't get that there's something wrong with eugenics. *facepalm*

The Earthquake in Haiti is a huge tragedy and my thoughts are with that country today...not all my thoughts, though, since my thoughts tend to be all over the place as a rule.

Some of my thoughts are geared towards how screwed up NY politics are. I don't have any major issues with Gillibrand so I think Howard Ford's stupidity is just cementing my belief that she is doing a good job. This interview he gave is just really lulzy.

I'm getting really irritated by Republicans/conservatives using "liberal" as a dirty word that means "anything I don't like politically." Because one of the political ticker items on CNN.com right now is that Ron Paul claimed Rick Santorum had a "liberal voting record."

Really? This is a guy who would make his own daughter carry her rapist's baby because it's a ~blessing from God~ and is against health insurance funding amniocentesis because it might lead to diagnosing a fetus with a condition like Down Syndrome which might lead to an abortion. What. The. Fuck.