North Korea: Food Crisis: 6 million on verge of starvation

Huffington Post (Mar23,2k11)

WASHINGTON — The United Nations reported Thursday that more than 6 million North Koreans, about a quarter of the communist state's population – are in urgent need of international food aid. The findings, the result of a needs assessment conducted in February and March, will add to pressure for the United States to resume food aid to North Korea suspended in 2009 after its monitors were expelled. But doing so could be seen as aiding a government that has since advanced its nuclear weapons programs and is accused of twice attacking U.S. ally South Korea.  In its report, the result of an assessment conducted in February and March, the U.N. said that North Korea has suffered a series of shocks including summer floods and then a harsh winter, "leaving the country highly vulnerable to a food crisis."

The proper response woud require an invitation from the super-hawkish North Korean govt, and a massive emergency relief operation from the outside world, including USA, Canada, UK, Australia from the English-speaking countries, much of the continental European Union states, and many countries thru-out the world. The govt of China shoud be involved -- but coud they cooperate with the "outsiders"?  Some of the countries mentioned like Australia is still in recovery mode from the widespread flooding on that continent just a few months ago.  New Zealand is struggling to recover from its own earthquake in Christchurch.  Japan, of course, is coping with its own sense of mortal wounding and of the struggle for survival since its own earthquakes, tsunami flooding, and nuclear disaster.


What if the world has to choose between helping Japan vs helping North Korea?  What are the hard choices for South Korea?


-- Politicarp


Read the whole story on this friteful development!

6 Million North Koreans 

Need Urgent Food Aid, UN Reports

MATTHEW PENNINGTON   03/24/11 06:30 PM   

Politics Canada: Budget: And Tricky Iggy's 'contempt of Parliament manoever predict Govt's fall otomorrow

'It's not too late'

Opposition still has time to step back from election: Harper

HARPER Prime Minister Stephen Harper looks up as he walks out to speak with the media outside the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Wednesday.

Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

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Liberals vow to bring down government

Ignatieff says his party will issue a non-confidence motion despite Prime Minister Harper’s insistence that...

• Spring election likely as opposition rejects Flaherty budget

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The prime minister says it's not to late to stop an election if opposition parties are willing to come to the table to discuss the budget. Should opposition parties sit down and discuss compromise or stay the course and bring the government down?

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OTTAWA The Harper government appears set to fall Friday, even as the Conservatives and opposition remind each other there’s still time to step back from the edge.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois — who all plan to vote against the federal budget handed down Tuesday — can still change their minds.

“The opposition still have the opportunity to put Canadians’ interests first,” he said. “It is not too late for them to step back.”

He rhymed off a string of measures from the budget, saying they are vital to support a still-fragile economic recovery.

“Our economy is not a political game,” he said.

However, the Conservatives have flatly refused to consider any amendments to their budget in order to stave off an election.

Video: Flaherty delivers budget

NDP Leader Jack Layton said he might still support the government if there are changes he can accept.

“There’s still a little bit of time,” he said. “I know that Mr. Harper and Mr. Flaherty are saying that they can’t possibly talk about amending the budget. I don’t know why. What’s the big obstacle to that? Others have done it before.”

Paul Martin’s Liberal minority government amended its budget in 2005 to meet NDP demands and avoid an election.

ed to consider any amendments to their budget in order to stave off an election.

Video: Flaherty delivers budget

NDP Leader Jack Layton said he might still support the government if there are changes he can accept.

“There’s still a little bit of time,” he said. “I know that Mr. Harper and Mr. Flaherty are saying that they can’t possibly talk about amending the budget. I don’t know why. What’s the big obstacle to that? Others have done it before.”

Paul Martin’s Liberal minority government amended its budget in 2005 to meet NDP demands and avoid an election.

Layton said he doesn’t hold out much hope that Harper will bend, adding that will mean the government will fall either to a budget vote or a Liberal non-confidence motion — both expected Friday.

Asked whether he might pre-empt his opponents by asking the Governor General to dissolve Parliament and call an election, Harper gave a flat no.

“Our priority is the economy and that will continue to be our focus as long as we’re allowed to make that our focus,” he said.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said he’s ready to introduce a non-confidence motion and debate it Friday.

“We have a responsibility to say quite clearly that this government has lost the confidence of the House of Commons,” he said. “This government has lost the confidence of Canadians.”

Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe said his party, too, will vote against the government. He said the Tories want to be defeated.

“Mr. Harper is not fooling anyone,” he said. “He wants an election at all costs.”

Harper tied up some legislative loose ends by attending a royal assent ceremony Wednesday, bringing into law any lingering legislation that has passed through the House of Commons and the Senate.

The Tories released yet another attack ad Wednesday, accusing the opposition parties of putting the fragile economy in peril by forcing an unnecessary election.

In addition to opposition to the budget, the Tories are facing accusations of contempt of Parliament, and have been dealing with a string of scandals.

The NDP unleashed the election fever Tuesday. Within minutes of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tabling his budget, Layton said his party did not see enough in the document to warrant continued support of the Conservative government.

“Mr. Harper had an opportunity to address the needs of hard-working, middle-class Canadians and families and he missed that opportunity,” the NDP leader said Tuesday.

Since the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois had made their opposition to the budget clear from the get-go, the only chance the Tories had of salvaging their plan — and their hold on power — was the NDP.

The budget contained several nods in the New Democrats’ direction.

It included a $300-million top-up to benefits for the poorest of poor seniors. It put $400 million into a one-year program to help homeowners make their houses more energy efficient. And it set aside $9 million a year to entice doctors and nurses to move to rural areas.

For the NDP, it was not nearly enough. They had asked for $700 million for seniors, along with measures to train and hire thousands of new doctors and nurses.

The party also asked for assurances that the federal government would work toward an expansion of the Canada Pension Plan and elimination of the federal tax from home heating. The budget ignored those requests.

The Canadian Press

CanadaEconomics: 4-sectored economy: What's Conserv govt gonna' do? Will parliament say Yes or No?

Comment magazine (Mar22,2k11)

Cardus Budget Analysis: 

Good News for Economy, 

Ho-Hum for Society

Read the whole article! Below is just a sampling...

by Ray Pennings and Robert Joustra

... C.D. Howe estimates that the unfunded liabilities of pension plans for federal government employees are enormous, possibly $65 billion higher than reported amounts in public accounts (Laurin and Robson, 2010). Demographically our health care system is in for a related crunch, as hospital beds are overwhelmed with elderly patients. How will the federal government deal with these challenges when the current health accord expires in 2014?"

Our Governor-General reviews our troops, 

presently engaged over Libya.

I continue to be impressed by the work of reformational thinktank Cardus and by Comment magazine, as well as by the contributions of these two writers to Cardus output overall.  -- EconoMix


While we're on the topic at hand, you may also want to check out these materials from Citizens for Public Justice, now based in Ottawa, which has info for us on

Bearing the Brunt

by Chandra Pasma | Monday, May 3rd, 2010

Bearing the Brunt: How the 2008-2009 Recession Created Poverty for Canadian Families details the rise in poverty and economic insecurity caused by the recession. The report examines key economic trends, comparing them to the baseline of 2007 (the last year for which poverty measures are available) in order to understand the recession’s impact.

The report: Bearing the Brunt

Le rapport: Elles en payent les frais

A summary document and provincial fact sheets are also available:

Bearing the Brunt – Summary 

Elles en payent les frais – Sommaire en français

Alberta
British Columbia
Manitoba
New Brunswick
Newfoundland and Labrador
Nova Scotia
Ontario
Prince Edward Island
Quebec
Saskatchewan

Hope for a New Day: 

Federal Poverty Reduction Strategy 

Is Now on the Agenda -- Catalyst (CPJ Winter 2010)

"CPJ's research indicates that poverty increased to 4.3 million as a result of the recession. November's Hunger Count by Food Banks Canada reported unprecedented historic highs in food bank use (up 9% this past year, after a record-setting increase of 18% in 2009).

Also in November, Campaign 2000's 2010 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty, reported that 1 in 1o children still lives in poverty.

Editorial guidelines: Copyrighted material: initiating a longterm refWrite think-thru

I fI found the following on the web somewhere:o


THE USE OF ANY COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL 
IS USED UNDER THE GUIDELINES OF "FAIR USE " 
IN TITLE 17 & 107 OF THE UNITED STATES CODE. 


SUCH MATERIAL REMAINS THE COPYRIGHT OF THE ORIGINAL OWNER 
AND IS USED HERE FOR THE PURPOSES OF 
EDUCATION, COMPARISON AND CRITICISM ONLY. 


Also, there's  parallel but different legislation in Canada, legislation which is being evaluated by a Parliamentary Committee for the purplose of writing a new copyright law.    The existing r+ts of the poor, especially those poor who blog, will probably be erased in the new law when Parliament finishes hacking to pieces the old provisions.   In the Bible, the poor were permitted by law (torah) to glean the fields of well-off after their workers completed the main job of the harvest.

I found the above (yellow text on red field) on the web, and woud only add to it the purpose of semiotic experiment on the digital level -- which includes altering by colour schematics, by repositioning, by refonting of typefaces, by resizing, by utlizing and/or removing elements from a found webpage that do not fit this blog in the original manner in which found, etc.  I have to think this thru further, so additional elements or new ideas may be added or removed.





-- Lawt for my fellow columnists, the general editor, and the publisher.




                        

8-)    8-)   8-)  

PoliticsUSA: Libya:What's Prez manouering for now?

Christopher Morris-VII for TIME

Why the U.S. Went to War: Inside the White House Debate on Libya

President Barack Obama says he's intervening to prevent atrocities in Libya. But details of behind-the-scenes debates at the White House show he's going to war in part to rehabilitate an idea.

By Massimo Calabresi

• Gaddafi Not Even a Target, Never Mind a Bullseye
• Don't Bet on a Brief — or Limited — War in Libya
• Can the Rebels Get Their Act Together?
• A Call from the Colonel: Gaddafi and His Bunker
• A Global Coalition Joins the Fight for Libya
• The Cult of Gaddafi: How He Built His Following

Read more: http://www.time.com/time#ixzz1HEoRgV3f

JuridicsUSA: The National Jurist: Advocates (ranks) law schools on 'diversity' norm

Volokh Conspiracy (Mar19,2k11)

The National Jurist Ranks Law Schools on “Diversity”

Posted: 19 Mar 2011 01:51 PM PDT

posted on VC by Ilya Somin

In the National Jurist, Rebecca Larsen has an article ranking law schools on the basis of “diversity.” At Balkinization, lawprofJason Mazzone makes some cogent criticisms of here approach.

Larsen ranks schools on the basis of the percentage of students and faculty who are African-American, Hispanic, or Asian, with a bonus if that percentage is significantly higher than the percentage of these groups in the state population. Under this system, most of the schools that get the highest possible rating (“A+”) turn out to be historically black schools where the student body is overwhelmingly black. Ironically, many of these schools are actually not especially diverse if that concept is understood as having a wide range of different groups represented by a “critical mass” in the student body, the theory adopted by the Supreme court in Grutter v. Bollinger as a justification for affirmative action. For example, one of the schools with an A+ rating is Howard University, where the student body is 78% African-American. Why should Howard be considered any more diverse than a school that is 78% white?

If, as Larsen says, the purpose of pursuing diversity is to ensure that a broad range of “viewpoints” is represented in the classroom, thereby giving students “a better education and classes more reflective of the world,” her ranking system makes no sense. From that standpoint, a school that is 78% black or 78% Hispanic is no better than one that is 78% white. Howard and other historically black schools should not be blamed for their lack of diversity. Indeed, as I have argued elsewhere, relative homogeneity within some schools promotes the laudable goal of diversity across institutions. But we should not pretend that such schools have unusually high diversity.

Moreover, it makes no sense to focus only on the representation of three groups defined by crude racial categories. Rather, a true diversity ranking would have to take account a wide range of ethnic, religious, political and other groups. Swedes, Utah Mormons, and Bulgarians all have different and unique cultures that could contribute to viewpoint diversity. But under Larsen’s approach, their presence actually lowers a school’s diversity ranking because it increases the percentage of the student body that counts as “white” rather than “minority.”


Larsen’s system makes somewhat better sense if the real goal is not diversity but compensatory justice for groups that have suffered historic discrimination in the US. Blacks, Asian-Americans, and to a much lesser extent Hispanics qualify on that basis. This compensatory justice rationale for affirmative action is, in my view, much more defensible than “diversity,” though certainly not a completely unproblematic one But the two rationales are different from each other and call for widely divergent policies. If Larsen and the National Jurist are actually promoting compensatory justice for [previously] victimized minority groups rather than diversity, they should say so explicitly and drop the diversity rhetoric, which is an extremely poor fit with their ranking system.

  

It seems to me that where I inserted in brackets the word "previously" [last ¶ above] that a sunset provision of some sort awt to be affixed to any legislation adopting the Somin Principle as

analysed and advocated in principle here.  Otherwise, you make the discrimination to which objection is made appear to be eternal, and thus the principle of compensatory justice becomes eternal, undoing the balance of the prima facie legislative framework, for which the compensatory arrangement is a corrective -- but not permanent, nor absolute, nor unremediated whatsoever by the subsequent adjustments.  Thanks to Dr Somin for his work on these matters. -- Lawt

PoliticsLibya: War: Arab Revolutions and Govts support generally but some suspicious of Western colonialism

Guardian (Mar20,2k11)

Libya: the Arab view

Compared with the war in Iraq, regional reactions to western involvement in Libya have been cautious and muted

Martin Chulov with additional reporting by Enas Ibrahim

• guardian.co.uk, Sunday 20 March 2011 17.30 GMT

Update:  We Are All Khaled Said the famous Egyptian revolution's news disseminator:  has tweeted another Guardian story:  Mohamad Nabbous was the first voice I heard on Free Libya Internet station on 17 Feb. He spoke for all Libyans & encouraged them to stand up for their rights & protest peacefully before Gaddafi's forces opened fire on them. He risked his life to spread international awareness about Libyans struggle just like I tried to do for Egypt on this page. Mohamad was killed in battle on 19 March.

Mohammad Nabbous, who set up an independent internet TV station in Benghazi, has been killed

Many Gulf states that condemned the war in Iraq have no reservations about coalition attacks on Gaddafi's forces. Photograph: Sipa Press / Rex Features

Egyptians strongly endorsed amendments to the country's constitution yesterday as aftershocks from the Arab spring revolts rumbled into the furthest reaches of the region.

More than 77% of the estimated 14 million-plus people who voted supported changes that will provide a blueprint for parliamentary and presidential elections to be held within the next six months.

Voting was mostly problem-free across the country, a significant result in a country that is emerging from more than three decades of dictatorship, when elections merely served to rubber-stamp ousted president Hosni Mubarak's rule, and voter turn out was low.

Elsewhere in the Arab world, tentative calls for democratic freedoms were met with force in both Saudi Arabia and Syria. In the Syrian town of Daraa, a second day of clashes with state security officers reportedly left one protester dead, in addition to the four reported killed yesterday.

A council building in the centre of town was burned down during the clashes. Some reports claimed it was a local headquarters of the Baath party, however they could not be verified.

In Saudi Arabia, where demonstrations are banned, protesters tried to force their way into the interior ministry in Riyadh demanding the release of prisoners who they said had been detained for up to two years without trial. Around 15 people were arrested, but no serious violence was reported.

However, the spectre of protests in the Saudi capital is something the Islamic kingdom's leader, King Abdullah, has been trying to avoid as he battles to contain an uprising in Bahrain on his northern border. The Saudi government holds grave fears that the Shia protests in Bahrain could stir unrest in eastern Saudi Arabia, which is home to most of the 12% Shia population.

Bahrain's rulers yesterday claimed to have uncovered a plot involving outside powers – an implicit reference to neighbouring Iran. The government asked Iranian diplomats to leave the tiny Gulf state and later called Lebanon's Hezbollah a terrorist organisation that was destabilising the region and impinging on Bahrain's sovereignty.

The unusually vehement tones underscore the sensitivity in the Gulf, where all the petro-states have been under pressure from their citizens to introduce widespread reforms.

Bahrain is in its second week of a three month period of martial law, which was introduced after weeks of violent clashes between citizens and riot police. The clashes have taken on a sectarian tone that the kingdom is anxious to play down.

Meanwhile, in the south of the Arabian Peninsula, the embattled leader of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, yesterday sacked his cabinet in the latest of a spate of moves designed to cling on to power. The clean sweep came two days after a massacre of more than 40 unarmed pro-reform protesters in the capital, Sana'a, which has drawn widespread condemnation and placed further pressure on Saleh to step down after more than 30 years in office.

The attacks on Libya have left the Arab world largely mute, unlike the opposition voiced before the last western assault on an Arab capital eight years ago.

Amid unrest and rebellion across the Middle East, a clear distinction has been made between the invasion of Baghdad and the bombing of selected targets in Libya. The former was widely condemned by many states that have had no such reservations about the bombing of Gaddafi's forces by US and European planes.

A key reason for that appears to be the west's stated desire not to overthrow Gaddafi but to leave his fate to be determined by Libyan citizens.

However, as the air campaign entered its second day, cracks began to appear in the regional solidarity on show last week when the Arab League voted in support of military action to protect civilians.

Read more of this superb overview by clicking the live-link just preceding or the green blog-entry headline above. - Politicarp