Sunday Reads: Saudi Arabia, New Guinea and China

Good morning, it is the last Sunday in June.  Just six months till Christmas, makes me cringe just thinking about it.  Yesterday, Boston Boomer and Dakinikat wrote some awesome posts.  I want to link them here so that you can read the articles if you missed them.

Dakinikat has put together some links about the possible nuclear event and cover-up reported to have happened in Nebraska.  How Safe are our Nuclear Reactors? « Sky Dancing

Boston Boomer had a very interesting post about the family dynamics and mental issues regarding Casey Anthony.  Many of our readers have requested BB’s professional input on the psychological aspects of this case.  Family Dynamics and the Casey Anthony Trial « Sky Dancing

Some more political prisoners have been released in China. The latest to be released: China frees dissident Hu Jia – Asia-Pacific – Al Jazeera English

One of China’s most prominent dissidents, Hu Jia, Has been released after serving three and half-years in jail.

“He is back home with his parents and me,” his wife, Zeng Jingyan, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Hu Jia was arrested in December 2007 after a long period of confinement at his home. He was sentenced in April in 2008 by Beijing People’s Intermediary Court No.1 for “incitement to subvert state power.”

Hu had written a series of articles ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games criticising the Chinese government on the state of human rights in China.

His release in the early hours of Sunday follows the freeing of prominent artist and activist Ai Weiwei. The releases come while Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is visiting Europe on trips to Hungary, Britain and Germany.

H/T to Dakota for mentioning the execution of an Indonesian maid, Ruyati binti Sapubi.  She was beheaded with a sword for attacking her employer after years of abuse when this “madam” denied her permission to go back home. This next article discusses the plight of these foreign workers.  Saudi Arabian torment of migrant workers at mercy of abusive ‘madams’ | World news | The Observer

A Saudi woman applies makeup to a woman at a cosmetics exhibition in Jeddah. Photograph: Amer Hilabi/AFP/Getty Images

Shortly after dawn, as the sun rises over the hills behind the city, tens of thousands of women will wake in the Saudi Arabian port of Jeddah and go to work. Maybe 14 or 16 hours later, their day will be over.

They are maids, almost all from the Philippines or Indonesia, working for £100-£200 a month. There are more than 500,000 of them in Saudi Arabia, among nearly nine million foreign workers who sweep roads, clean offices, staff coffee shops, drive the cars that women are banned from driving and provide the manpower on the vast construction projects.

Wow, all those immigrants and foreign workers doing the jobs the Saudi’s are not keen to do themselves. Kind of sound familiar?

Every year, thousands of the maids run away from their employers in Saudi Arabia.

Often physically or mentally scarred, they find themselves in a legal limbo. In Saudi Arabia, the consent of employers or “sponsors” is needed before any worker can leave the country.

Last week the Observer was able to visit a secret shelter in Jeddah – there are others elsewhere in Saudi Arabia – where 50 women are being looked after by well-wishers. The shelter is tolerated by local authorities, but the women who stay there, often for months on end, are not allowed to leave once they have entered and cannot use mobile phones. Sixteen sleep in a single room.

The maids say, however, that it is better than what they left behind. Most tell of fleeing employers who did not pay their wages; many talk of physical, mental or sexual abuse.

It is very discouraging to read about these abuses.  Dakota, one of our readers, has commented on conditions in Saudi Arabia. If you missed the links Dakota posted, please check them out.

I would like to move on to some immigration issues here in the US.  This article discusses a new bill from the GOP that would freeze Obama admin’s power to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants – TheHill.com

The Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee is crafting a bill that would temporarily freeze the Obama administration’s power to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants.

The measure is in response to a memo issued by the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last week that approved a broader breadth of discretion for agency officials when considering whether to deport someone through the Secure Communities program.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who is sponsoring the legislation, blasted the memo. He said that under the new guidelines ICE agents could defer the deportations of “millions of deportable illegal and criminal immigrants.”

[…]

The ICE memo comes in the wake of recent attempts by President Obama to push forward with a revamping of the country’s immigration laws. Republicans on Capitol Hill have broadly indicated their opposition to the Democrat-led efforts, with some calling for a more secure U.S.-Mexico border before immigration talks can begin. Immigration reform is widely regarded as having little chance of passing in the divided 112th Congress.

I doubt Obama will take a definite stand on any immigration reform led by Democrats, I mean, he just “voted present” with his recent dodge on same-sex marriage at a NY fundraiser this past week.

In Georgia, we are having our own economic crisis due to the over zealous anti-immigration legislative actions of our Republican politicians.  Farmers have crops rotting in the fields. If Georgia Drives Away Immigrant Workers, Will Its Economy Suffer? | Mother Jones

Republican Gov. Nathan Deal—who spearheaded the immigration crackdown and put the issue at the heart of his 2010 campaign—has put a few potential solutions on the table, including a dubious-sounding proposal that my colleague Lauren Ellis covered earlier this month in which farmers would hire 2,000 unemployed convicts who are free on probation to work on the farms instead.

The dilemma facing Georgia’s largest industry makes it clear that state legislators didn’t think through the serious ramifications of their sweeping new immigration law. Like it or not, immigrants are an integral part of the workforce in Georgia, as elsewhere, and simply trying to cast them out without making further adjustments to the labor market and economy can have unintended consequences.

Which leads me to this article from the Washington Post.  Can liberals start their own tea party? – The Fix – The Washington Post

At last weekend’s Netroots Nation gathering in Minneapolis, liberal activists expressed frustration that they lacked the political power or media focus given to the conservative tea-party movement. Former White House environmental official Van Jones is hoping to change that with a new political effort dubbed “The American Dream Movement.”

Organizers are hoping to emulate the the success of the tea party, which became a significant force in the 2010 midterms, uniting like-minded people across the country who were previously uninvolved in politics or participating locally but not at the national level.

I just don’t know if something like this is going to take off.  I think part of what binds the tea party together is their extreme religious beliefs. Oh, and lets talk a bit about extreme beliefs. Get this latest statement from RuPaul, ah..Ron Paul.  Ron Paul Takes on Abortion: ‘The Most Important Issue of Our Age’ | Sunshine State News

Stuck in Washington as Congress faces votes on continued funding of American military action in Libya, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, making his third bid for the White House, spoke via Skype to pro-life activists convening in Jacksonville.

“I talk a lot about right-to-life,” said Paul, who called it “the most important issue of our age.”

“To give abortion-on-demand is to show there is no respect for life,” Paul told the National Right-to-Life Committee’s (NRLC) annual convention.

“Liberty is secondary to life,” insisted Paul. “If you’re careless about the defense of life, you can’t be a champion of liberty.”

Please, someone get me a cleaning woman and a bucket!

If that does not get you sick, then just take a look at this recent news out of Iowa.  BB emailed me this link last night.  How can people be serious about Bachmann.  It must be those eyes.  I am thinking some kind of hypnosis or mind bending thing when voters look into Bachmann’s wacky eyes.  Des Moines Register poll: Romney, Bachmann up – Maggie Haberman – POLITICO.com

The numbers are out from the first Des Moines Register poll of the cycle, and they codify what is becoming conventional wisdom – Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann are rising, and Tim Pawlenty is facing a real uphill battle.

Well, perhaps CNN can ask a psychic about the mystical Bachmann stare in their next report?  Did you see this next video link…CNN Economy Psychics – Global Financial Predictions – Video | Mediaite

This might be the most mind-bogglingly idiotic thing I have ever seen on cable news, and I say that having seen a lot of idiotic things on cable news. CNN has now upped the ante several degrees by devoting a segment about the economy not to unemployment, not to our nation’s financial institutions, but to the question of what if f**king psychics had all the answers?

CNN’s Felicia Taylor could have chosen to focus on the current debt ceiling talks, or even how average Americans are getting by in these tough economic times. So whose idea exactly was it to ask random psychics from the streets of New York what our economy will look like down the road?

Click the link above to see video of the CNN clip.  Pathetic is what comes to my mind.

From Minx’s Missing Link File: I absolutely love this picture below, be sure to read the article.  Many Black New Yorkers Are Moving to the South – NYTimes.com

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

Candace Wilkins, 27, left, of St. Albans, Queens, with her mother, right, and her grandmother. Ms. Wilkins plans to move to Charlotte, N.C.

In Deborah Brown’s family lore, the American South was a place of whites-only water fountains and lynchings under cover of darkness. It was a place black people like her mother had fled.

But for Ms. Brown, 59, a retired civil servant from Queens, the South now promises salvation.

Three generations of her family — 10 people in all — are moving to Atlanta from New York, seeking to start fresh economically and, in some sense, to reconnect with a bittersweet past. They include Ms. Brown, her 82-year-old mother and her 26-year-old son, who has already landed a job and settled there.

The economic downturn has propelled a striking demographic shift: black New Yorkers, including many who are young and college educated, are heading south

[…]

The movement marks an inversion of the so-called Great Migration, which lasted roughly from World War I to the 1970s and saw African-Americans moving to the industrializing North to escape prejudice and find work.

Spencer Crew, a history professor at George Mason University who was the curator of a prominent exhibit on the Great Migration at the Smithsonian Institution, said the current exodus from New York stemmed largely from tough economic times. New York is increasingly unaffordable, and blacks see more opportunities in the South.

Easy like Sunday Morning Link of the Week:  Two for you this week…New Guinea’s newly discovered species – in pictures | Environment | The Observer

Photographs of New Guinea’s incredible range of previously unknown species

Click the link above for images of some of the new species that have been discovered.  My favorites are the Chrysiptera cymatilis (blue damsel fish) and the Vogelkop (Bird’́s Head) lizard.

See this next link to an article that explains the discovery of all these new species of animals:  Conservationists discover more than 1,000 species in New Guinea | Environment | The Observer

Conservationists discover more than 1,000 species in New Guinea

Treasure trove of unknown varieties of animal, bird, fish, insect and plant have been identified in the forests and wetlands of the Pacific island over a period of just 10 years

Wattled Smoky Honeyeater (Melipotes carolae). Photograph: WWF

A new type of tree kangaroo, a 2.5-metre-long river shark, a frog with vampire-like fangs and a turquoise lizard are among hundreds of new creatures found and being documented in a report by conservationists working in the Pacific island of New Guinea.

Some 1,060 previously unknown species of mammals, fish and birds have been spotted in the volcanic island over a 10-year period.

The Final Frontier report, which was put together by WWF as part of its 50th anniversary celebrations, marks a brief respite from the escalating rate of animal and plant extinctions which is taking its toll across the planet and has left a quarter of all known mammals on the endangered list.

The species have all been discovered, at a rate of two each week, in the period from 1998 to 2008 by the various teams and researchers who have visited the region and its extensive forests, waters and wetlands.

One team discovered a new bird, the wattled smoky honeyeater, within seconds of leaving their expedition helicopter.

Enjoy those beautiful pictures and post some links to articles you are finding interesting today.