Sochi: Imperial Russian minority deportation center

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Circassian-WarriorIn addition to the much more contemporary mass slaughter of ethnic Chechens by the Russian Federation (and earlier waves of deadly internal deportations by the Soviet Union), there’s the simple, horrifying reality that the Sochi Olympics are being held pretty much at ground zero of a 19th century genocide/mass expulsion.
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Interview: Background on Venezuela situation

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In March 2013, a little less than a year ago, I interviewed the University of Delaware’s Dr. Julio Carrion, an expert on mass support for authoritarian alternatives to democracy in Latin America, about the legacy of President Hugo Chavez, who had just passed away at the time. Since then, his party and successor has struggled to keep Venezuela’s population happy — leading to protests in the last several days.

This 18 minute interview provides a ton of great background information on the problems facing Venezuelans today.

Interview on Hugo Chavez – Dr. Julio Carrion

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VW: When management is the vanguard of the proletariat

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volkswagenBeen a busy month for me so I haven’t had a chance to give the story due diligence, but if you didn’t hear: the German automaker Volkswagen’s U.S. division attempted to unionize their own workers in Tennessee.

This is unusual for a number of reasons, as I’ll get to in a moment, but it’s particularly significant coming in Tennessee, a state that has become home to a lot of foreign car manufacturers’ American branches and is a so-called “Right to Work” state. “Right to Work” laws are designed discourage unionization by changing how worker votes occur and allowing management to intimidate or pressure workers into voting against forming a union, i.e. giving workers the “right” to work outside of union (because every American must have the right to be their own David against the corporate Goliath in contract negotiations… I guess?).

So anyway, if VW employees unionize, it will automatically put pressure on Tennessee’s other foreign-based carmakers to raise wages somewhat to remain competitive and retain their workers, even if they remain non-unionized (past studies have demonstrated this effect pretty clearly), and it will probably encourage unionization drives elsewhere.
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Europe and the American death penalty

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death-penaltyTypically, the only countries that try to tell the United States what to do are in the company of North Korea and Venezuela.

Europe definitely doesn’t make a habit of condemning the policies of the U.S. government and certainly not the policies of specific state governments. Part of that is that it would be unlikely to accomplish much. Part of it is a recognition that they would not like the U.S., a peer nation among developed democracies, telling them what to do at home, either.

They may disagree privately or shake their heads, but it’s rare for European leaders to say anything in an official capacity or to do anything substantive about it. This may be changing a bit in light of the NSA scandals, but there’s also actually already been one fairly quiet exception: the U.S. death penalty. They’ve been very firm on the issue and are increasingly ramping up official activism to end it.
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An end to Spanish universal jurisdiction?

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The Spanish parliament has decided to consider a bill to limit “universal jurisdiction” currently granted to Spanish courts. This means that Spanish judges would no longer be able to rule on human rights violations not directly concerning Spain, an unusual power they currently hold and have used. The move comes immediately after a decision by a Spanish judge to pursue the arrest of China’s former president Jiang Zemin, as well as other officials, over human rights violations in Tibet.
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AFD 73 – Michael Sam, Uganda legislation

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AFD-logo-big-newLatest Episode:
AFD 73 – Michael Sam, Uganda
New episode: Nate and Greg join Bill to discuss Michael Sam as well as Uganda’s anti-gay push from US evangelicals.

 

 
Note: This is the full 43 minute version of this episode. The air version this week only included the first segment. We’ll be returning to full-length episodes on air next week.

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