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Contents contributed and discussions participated by sgardner35

sgardner35

This Is Trump Country - The New York Times - 0 views

  • In December, the unemployment rate was 8 percent, among the highest in Massachusetts. Its median income is about half that of the state as a whole. Even its city motto lacks gusto: “We’ll try.”
  • Bruno Teixeira, 68, voted for Mr. Trump on Tuesday. He used to work as a foreman at a factory that dyed and finished cloth. “I was fortunate that I could say I retired,” he said. “I never thought I would, I thought it was going to be pulled out from under me, like it was for a lot of my colleagues.” Mr. Teixeira’s father came to the United States from Portugal, his mother from England. He said he liked Mr. Trump’s views on immigration, as well as his straightforward talk.“He has something to say, he says it,” Mr. Teixeira said. “That’s what I like about the man.”
  • Much of this county northeast of Nashville, along the border with Kentucky, is farmland, though there are also jobs in manufacturing. The county is among the state’s biggest producers of tobacco, and it also produces hardwood lumber. Shelta Shrum, 59, spent two decades working at a boot factory, where she was a clerical worker. Not long after she retired, the factory was shuttered. The jobs, she said, went to Mexico. “We knew it was going to happen,” Ms. Shrum said, “and it was something we dreaded every day.” Ms. Shrum, who edits the newsletter for the local historical society, said Mr. Trump was speaking up about the kinds of things people talk about every day. “We’re rural, and we’re not always politically correct,” she said. “We call it like we see it. And he’s doing that for us, very loudly.”
sgardner35

Tensions Simmer as a Small Town Seeks Answers in a Boy's Killing - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Garrett Phillips, a popular and outgoing 12-year-old, was strangled in his home in fall 2011. The murder set off a mad, all-consuming pursuit for a killer in a region where such crimes are extraordinarily rare.
  • It took more than 30 months for prosecutors to charge him with second-degree murder, in May 2014 — and months more to secure a second indictment after the first was thrown out for prosecutorial misconduct. Despite the long pursuit, the case that a jury will hear this summer is far from perfect: There is a distinct lack of hard evidence, according to police testimony — no fingerprints, no witnesses, no hair or tissue samples, seemingly no conclusive forensic evidence at all connecting Mr. Hillary to the crime.In the long lead-up to the prosecution of Mr. Hillary, his supporters have highlighted not only the absence of physical evidence but the lack of any plausible motive or history that would suggest he was capable of murdering a child. They have also said that another man, a local sheriff’s deputy who once dated Garrett’s mother, was removed from suspicion too quickly.
  • “I can’t think of any other person who would want to hurt Garrett,” Ms. Cyrus said in a statement to the police after her son died.Like the Raquette River, which splits Potsdam in two, the case has divided opinion and tested residents’ patience in St. Lawrence County, a rural and job-challenged region where 94 percent of the population is white. But the emotional impact on Potsdam is raw and evident: Garrett’s former teachers and family friends cry at his memory, while the village’s elders echo one another, saying such terrible crimes simply do not happen in places like this.“It was like a meteor hitting,” said Ron Tischler, the mayor of Potsdam, home to around 9,600 residents that is about 25 miles south of Ontario.
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  • Mr. Hillary has also accused the county prosecutor, Mary Rain, of forsaking justice in the name of keeping a campaign promise: Ms. Rain was elected in 2013, in part on the strength of campaigning with Ms. Cyrus and promising to focus the energies of her small office on Garrett’s murder.
  • The suspicions and repercussions surrounding the boy’s death have rippled through time and distance. A key defense witness, for instance, suddenly discovered “Justice for Garrett” signs posted near his new workplace and home — each hundreds of miles from Potsdam. Mr. Hillary, now free on bail, found himself rearrested in September for allegedly violating an order of protection by using a drive-through A.T.M. at the bank where Ms. Cyrus worked.
  • Garrett Phillips was an ebullient child despite an early-life tragedy: When he was a toddler, his father, Robert — an amiable grounds worker at the State University of New York at Potsdam — suffered a brain aneurysm and never recovered. He died before Garrett was 3.Though Garrett never knew his father, the boy emulated him as he grew. Like his father, he hunted and fished; played any sport involving a ball; and balanced his rowdy and respectful sides, rambunctious sometimes in public but polite to family and strangers.
  • On the afternoon of Oct. 24, 2011, Garrett was playing basketball at the middle school with some friends as rain fell intermittently. A little before 5 p.m., Tandy Cyrus called his cellphone and told him to go home to do schoolwork.
  • Garrett got on his caster board — something of a cross between a skateboard and a snowboard — and headed home, his progress captured by a series of surveillance cameras and later described in a police timeline.
  • Combing the apartment for evidence, investigators found a possible clue: The screen of the bedroom window, about 20 feet off the ground, was “bent outward,” according to the incident report. A tile seemed to be broken on the roof of a lower section of the building, about 10 feet below, and there was a gash in the grass
  • His appeal, as both a coach and a person, is evident: His energy is intense, but his smile is unencumbered. He said he had always loved the North Country region’s rural mountains and summertime greenery — when it was warm it reminded him of Jamaica — though he was aware of the cultural boundaries beyond campus.“You’re a black person,” he said in an interview. “You were viewed as such.”A year after being hired by Clarkson, Mr. Hillary found that his relationship with his longtime girlfriend, Stacia Lee, the mother of his three children, was struggling. At a bar called Ton’s, he became acquainted with a bartender, Tandy Cyrus.
  • “I go, ‘Listen. Help me understand. Are you and Tandy together?’” Deputy Jones said.Ms. Cyrus, 37, declined to be interviewed for this article, but Mr. Hillary said he had been harassed because of his relationship with her. “It’s not a community with a lot of interracial relationships,” he said, adding that he had “to be mindful” when he was out. “I would go to the local restaurant,” he said, and Deputy Jones’s “friends would come up to me and like, ‘You know you’re not supposed to be dating John’s girl.’”A few months after they met, Mr. Hillary and Ms. Cyrus moved in together, forming a household of five, including his teenage daughter, Shanna-Kay, and Ms. Cyrus’s two sons.
  • Lieutenant Murray saw Mr. Duff as deeply credible.“I just can’t bring myself to fathom why a collegiate person playing on a Division III soccer team with his entire future ahead of him would lie and perjure himself on a sworn statement for no reason,” he said.On the evening after the murder, Lieutenant Murray went to watch Clarkson’s men’s soccer squad and videotaped Mr. Hillary coaching the penultimate game of a rough season. (The 2011 Clarkson squad had more losses than goals.)According to a search-warrant application, as Mr. Hillary strode along the sideline, he seemed stiff and sedate and had a “significant limp in his right leg,” something the detective inferred would have been caused by jumping from a second-story window. Last year, though, The Watertown Daily Times posted a clip from Lieutenant Murray’s video: In it, Mr. Hillary appears to walk unhindered along the sidelines.
  • As the men were being questioned, detectives searched for damning evidence. They seized Mr. Hillary’s phone and examined the contents of his pockets and his socks. Nude photographs, fingerprints and palm prints were taken. Mr. Hillary’s car was searched. (The timing of the seizures, and of the subsequent search warrants, has been a focus of Mr. Hillary’s civil suit.) The police also obtained his DNA from a coffee cup and the butt of a cigarette.
sgardner35

Nancy Reagan, an Influential and Protective First Lady, Dies at 94 - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Nancy Reagan, the influential and stylish wife of the 40th president of the United States who unabashedly put Ronald Reagan at the center of her life but became a political figure in her own right, died on Sunday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 94.
  • President Obama said on Sunday that Mrs. Reagan “had redefined the role” of first lady, adding, “Later, in her long goodbye with President Reagan, she became a voice on behalf of millions of families going through the depleting, aching reality of Alzheimer’s, and took on a new role, as advocate, on behalf of treatments that hold the potential and the promise to improve and save lives.”
  • Behind the scenes, Mrs. Reagan was the prime mover in Mr. Reagan’s efforts to recover from the scandal, which was known as Iran-contra because some of the proceeds from the sale had been diverted to the contras opposing the leftist government of Nicaragua. While trying to persuade her stubborn husband to apologize for the arms deal, Mrs. Reagan brought political figures into the White House, among them the Democratic power broker Robert S. Strauss, to argue her case to the president.
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  • He reciprocated in kind. “How do you describe coming into a warm room from out of the cold?” he once said. “Never waking up bored? The only thing wrong is, she’s made a coward out of me. Whenever she’s out of sight, I’m a worrier about her.”
  • But this was a convention in a day when women were not encouraged to have careers outside the home. In his book “Reagan’s America: Innocents At Home,” Garry Wills disputed the prevalent view that Miss Davis had just been marking time in Hollywood while waiting for a man. She was “the steady woman,” he wrote, who in most of her 11 films had held her own with accomplished actors.
  • In the late 1940s, Hollywood was in the grip of a “Red Scare,” prompted by government investigations into accusations of Communist influence in the film industry. In October 1949, the name “Nancy Davis” appeared in a Hollywood newspaper on a list of signers of a supporting brief urging the Supreme Court to overturn the convictions of two screenwriters who had been blacklisted after being found guilty of contempt for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee.Such newspaper mentions could mean the end of a career, and Nancy Davis sought help from her friend Mervyn LeRoy, who had directed her in “East Side, West Side.” LeRoy found it was a case of mistaken identity: another Nancy Davis had worked in what he called “leftist theater.” He offered to call Ronald Reagan, president of the Screen Actors Guild, to make sure there would be no problems in the future. Instead, Miss Davis insisted that LeRoy set up a meeting with Mr. Reagan.
  • From the first, Mrs. Reagan was part of the campaign planning. “They were a team,” said Stuart Spencer, who with Bill Roberts managed the Reagan campaign. New to politics, she said little at first. But Mr. Spencer found her “a quick learner, always absorbing.” Before long she was peppering Mr. Roberts and Mr. Spencer about their strategy and tactics.
  • The mansion episode, and Mrs. Reagan’s unalloyed preference for Southern California, aroused parochial resentment in Sacramento. She in turn disliked the city’s locker-room political culture, which required her to socialize with the wives of legislators who had insulted her husband. She bristled at press scrutiny, which became more intense after Joan Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, wrote an unflattering article, “Pretty Nancy,” in The Saturday Evening Post in 1968. The article described Mrs. Reagan’s famous smile as a study in frozen insecurity.
  • Mr. Reagan decided to debate and did so well that he surged ahead in the polls and won convincingly a week later.
  • After the assassination attempt, Mrs. Reagan turned to Joan Quigley, a San Francisco astrologer, who claimed to have predicted that March 30 would be a “bad day” for the president. Her relationship with Ms. Quigley “began as a crutch,” Mrs. Reagan wrote, “one of several ways I tried to alleviate my anxiety about Ronnie.” Within a year, it was a habit. Mrs. Reagan conversed with Ms. Quigley by telephone and passed on the information she received about favorable and unfavorable days to Mr. Deaver, the presidential assistant, and later to the White House chief of staff, Donald Regan, for use in scheduling.
  • Mr. Regan disclosed Mrs. Reagan’s astrological bent in his 1988 book, “For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington,” asserting that the Quigley information created a chaotic situation for White House schedulers. Mrs. Reagan said that no political decisions had been made based on the astrologist’s advice, nor did Mr. Regan allege that any had been.But the disc
  • losure was nonetheless embarrassing to Mrs. Reagan; she and many commentators saw it as an act of revenge for the role she had played in forcing Mr. Regan out after the Iran-contra disclosures. Mrs. Reagan’s low opinion of Mr. Regan was well known; she had said tartly that he “liked the sound of chief but not of staff.”
sgardner35

Michigan Primary Puts Donald Trump's Rust Belt Strategy to a Test - The New York Times - 0 views

  • A construction manager, Mr. Mortensen escaped the waves of layoffs because his employer, which once built plants for heavy industry, is now in the demolition business. “Those factories are gone, and I get to knock ’em down, unfortunately,” he said.
  • If he is the nominee, Mr. Trump argues, he could deliver not only Michigan but other Rust Belt states, like Ohio and Pennsylvania, into the Republican column in November, broadening the party’s traditional road to the White House.
  • “This is probably the worst state in the country with the economy,” Mr. Reidt said as he entered the rally with members of his firehouse.
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  • Stanley B. Greenberg, whose research in Macomb County in the 1980s popularized the term “Reagan Democrat,” said Mr. Trump might put the Rust Belt into play. “There’s no doubt there’s new voters coming into the Republican primary process,” he said.But Mr. Greenberg added that there was an equal potential for a backlash in an electorate that is more racially and culturally diverse. “The country’s changed pretty dramatically from the time when Reagan Democrats were calling the shots,” he said.
  • Detroit’s automakers are experiencing record sales.Nonetheless, the narrative of decline is pervasive, especially because many of the new jobs being created pay far less.“We’ve got McDonald’s and Burger King jobs, and that’s about it,” said Mr. Reidt, the fire captain.
sgardner35

Harvard Law to Abandon Crest Linked to Slavery - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Harvard Law School is poised to abandon an 80-year-old shield based on the crest of a slaveholding family that helped endow the institution, as campuses across the country debate the use of historic names and symbols that some consider offensive.
  • s. Gordon-Reed said sheaves of wheat had also appeared on American pennies and did not have the visceral associations of a Confederate or Nazi flag. Besides, she said, since it was designed in 1936, the shield had taken on its own meaning, separate from the Royall family, honoring the law school graduates. Her opinion acknowledged the complexities that universities confront in dealing with these issues and was a rare departure from the cautious approach of many campuses.
  • In the letter of apology, the deans, Stephen Lassonde and Thomas Dingman, said the place mat “failed to account for the many viewpoints that exist on our campus.
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  • In an email Friday, Ms. Gordon-Reed said she had been influenced by her scholarship on Hemings. “This is my life’s work,” she said. “I sincerely believe that we owe it to the enslaved to work through those feelings and think of ways to carry their stories forward. And we should do that in a way that shows the inherently entwined nature of the good and bad of our past, using written text and symbols like the sheaves and, even, buildings like Monticello.”
sgardner35

Donald Trump on torture: 'We have to beat the savages' - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

  • "We have to play the game the way they're playing the game. You're not going to win if we're soft and they're, they have no rules," Trump said in an interview taped Saturday that aired Sunday morning
  • , 'Look, we're going to treat your guys well. Will you please do us a favor and treat our guys well?' They don't do that. We're not playing by -- we are playing by rules, but they have no rules. It's very hard to win when that's the case," Trump said, adding that the United States' ban on waterboarding is a sign of weakness.
sgardner35

Get a Grip on Inequality, Leaders Urged in Run-Up to Davos - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Two reports published Monday, from Oxfam and public relations firm Edelman, warned that the widening gap between the haves and have-nots since the global financial crisis is undermining a decades-long effort to reduce global poverty and fueling the rise of populist politicians.
  • While the wealth of the poorest half of the world's population — more than 3.6 billion people — has fallen by a trillion dollars, or 41 percent, since 2010, Oxfam said in its report that the wealth of the super-elite has risen by around half a trillion dollars
  • Tax havens, she said, are at the core of the rigged system that allows big corporations and wealthy individuals to avoid paying their fair share of tax."I challeng
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  • Even the International Monetary Fund has warned of the perils to growth stemming from this gap.
  • e the governments, companies and elites at Davos to play their part in ending the era of tax havens, which is fuelling economic inequality and preventing hundreds of millions of people lifting themselves out of poverty,"
  • Edelman found general level of trust in institutions — government, business, media and non-governmental organizations — among college-educated people around the globe up 4 percentage points at 60 percent, its highest level in the survey's 16 year-history. For the wider public, Edelman's trust gauge was up 2 percentage points at 48 percent.It noted that the U.S. has the biggest disparity in trust within its population, followed by Britain and France. Edelman's online survey of 33,000 plus respondents in 28 countries, was conducted between Oct. 13 and Nov. 16, 2015.
sgardner35

'I Have a Dream' should be required reading - CNN.com - 1 views

  • If we did, we would know that King declared, matter-of-factly, that America had not made good on its promise of full citizenship rights to black people. We would acknowledge, 50 years later, how sad and unfortunate it is that we are still having the same conversations about equality for people of color, women, the LGBTQ community
  • a lesson some of us need to learn or relearn as we engage in civil disobedience in this new millennium. But those who say movements of today are disrupting their lives also fail to connect that the civil rights movement was completely about making the comfortable uncomfortable until real justice was served.
  • g's "I Have a Dream" speech. My mother and her family were so poor she interrupted her education for the first of many times when she was only 8 years old, to pick cotton on land owned by local whites that had been forcibly taken from her grandfather upon his death at their hands. The family was so poor there was no telephone, no television, no radio, and no indoor plumbing.
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  • Nor do they love people like my mother, a woman born and bred in the backwoods of South Carolina, whose 20th birthday was the same day as Ki
  • "I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of 'interposition' and 'nullification' — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."
  • I sensed his sorrow when he talked about the need for a relevant ministry among the faith community, and how so many have moved so far away from being relevant in these times. I think of how King asked us to practice a dangerous kind of selflessness, to not put ourselves, our lives, our material things, before people. The dream cannot be only about individual success, individual progress, while ignoring the plight of others. Even if we have some form of privilege, as King himself had, we must never forget that the basics of life must be for all people.
sgardner35

Ben Carson is living in the wrong decade (Opinion) - CNN.com - 0 views

  • Ben Carson, there's prison.Yep, prison. Stay away from crime, kids.Turns ya gay.Read MoreCarson, who, let me reiterate, is a potential presidential candidate from a major American party, and a neurosurgeon to boot, told CNN's Chris Cuomo in an interview that aired Wednesday that "a lot of people ... go into prison straight -- and when they come out, they're gay."
  • People change. But presidential candidates don't get that leeway.Carson should know better. (In fact, he later apologized, regretting his words but saying the science on the issue of sexual orientation isn't clear.)
  • Being gay is not a choice. Don't believe me? Well, ask a gay person. As I mentioned, I'm one of those (despite never having seen "Frozen" in its entirety), and I can tell you that, for me, it wasn't a choice. It's not something I would want to undo, but it also isn't like I woke up one day and was like, huh, you know what would really mix it up this winter? Dating dudes instead of ladies.
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  • But the point remains that saying so both belittles a serious issue of violence -- that of men raping other men in prison, which has nothing to do with turning anyone gay and everything to do with criminal activity. And it's a serious lapse in logic. Being around a bunch of dudes -- or ladies -- in prison doesn't change a person's innate sexual attractions.
sgardner35

ISIS getting social media megaphone (Opinion) - CNN.com - 0 views

  • Earlier this month, ISIS posted a video of its horrific burning of a captured Jordanian pilot. Unfortunately, this was not the first time ISIS has used Twitter, an American social media company, to broadcast its barbaric acts to the world. In August, when ISIS released the gruesome beheading of American journalist James Foley, it also used social media. In fact, ISIS has been using Twitter for years.
  • Nor is ISIS the only terrorist group on Twitter.
  • The group has two official accounts on Twitter.
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  • . It's with this reality in mind that on January 27, my subcommittee held a hearing on terrorists' use of social media. At those hearings, experts detailed how terrorist use of social media platforms has long been a problem.
  • The first -- and easiest to set aside -- is the claim that if the U.S. government were to shut down terrorists' social media accounts, these measures would be violating terrorists' free speech rights.
  • The second argument is that terrorists' use of social media provides the intelligence community with information that they would not otherwise be able to acquire. But while terrorists may slip up from time to time, they are also aware that by its very nature, social media is about sharing, which means what they say can easily become widely shared
  • Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act states that it is unlawful to provide a designated foreign terrorist organization with "material support or resources," including "any property, tangible or intangible, or services."
  • It is mindboggling to think that those who behead and burn others alive are able to use our own companies against us to further their cause. But that is exactly what is occurring. American newspapers would have never allowed the Nazis to place an ad for recruitment during World War II. Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations should not be allowed to use private American companies to reach billions of people with their violent propaganda in an instant, all for free.
sgardner35

Jihadi John: The bourgeois terrorist - CNN.com - 0 views

  • Emwazi poses something of a problem for the Obama administration's narrative about who becomes a terrorist and why. Last week, the administration hosted a three-day conference on "Countering Violent Extremism," which is a government euphemism for how best to deal with Islamist terrorism.
  • Obama said that "we have to address grievances terrorists exploit, including economic grievances."
  • he President did acknowledge that terrorists can be rich like Osama bin Laden, who was the son of a Sau
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  • di construction magnate and attended the top high school and the best university in Saudi Arabia. It's hard to imagine someone with more opportunities
  • But, in fact, Osama bin Laden is more the rule than the exception. Take not only Emwazi/Jihadi John, but also the notorious British terrorist, Omar Sheikh, who attended the London School of Economics and who kidnapped American journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002.
  • Similarly, in his important 2004 book "Understanding Terror Networks," psychiatrist Marc Sageman, a former CIA case officer, examined the backgrounds of 172 militants who were part of al Qaeda or a similar group. Just under half were professionals; two-thirds were either middle or upper class and had gone to college; indeed, several had doctorates.
  • Significantly, we found that, of those who did attend college and/or graduate school, 58% attained scientific or technical degrees. Emwazi/Jihadi John reportedly studied computer programming, which makes him typical of the anti-Western jihadist terrorists we examine
  • The fact is, working stiffs with few opportunities and scant education are generally too busy getting by to engage in revolutionary projects to remake society.
  • Post-9/11 research demonstrating that Islamist terrorism is mostly a pursuit of the middle class echoed an important study about Egyptian militants that was undertaken by the French academic Gilles Kepel during the mid-1980s.
  • The conclusion, based on a survey of all the published literature, was that there were only a few "major exceptions to the middle- and upper-class origins of terrorist groups."
  • ISIS may be a perversion of Islam, but Islamic it is, just as Christian beliefs about the sanctity of the unborn child explain why some Christian fundamentalists attack abortion clinics and doctors. But, of course, murderous Christian fundamentalists are not killing many thousands of civilians a year. More than 80% of the world's terrorist attacks take place in five Muslim-majority countries
  • will kill in the name of their god, an all-too-common phenomenon across human history.
  • ISIS and like-minded groups and their fellow travelers are not representative of the vast majority of the world's Muslims, their ideology is rooted in Salafist ultra-fundamentalist interpretations of Islam, and indeed they can point to verses in the Quran that can be interpreted to support their worldview.
  • In other words, coming out of Khorasan, an area that now encompasses Afghanistan, will come an army that includes the Mahdi, the Islamic savior of the world. The parent organization of ISIS was al Qaeda, which, of course, was headquartered in Afghanistan at the time of the 9/11 attacks.
  • religious group and nationality that they perceive as standing in their way. ISIS recruits also believe that we are in the end times, and they are best understood as members of an Islamist apocalyptic death cult.
sgardner35

Activist: Malawi's constitution is failing girls - CNN.com - 0 views

  • Part of my research methodology was to engage in focus group discussi
  • ons with women in village settings. In order to do this in any village in Malawi, one has to seek permission from the village chief.And so I did. The chief told me to come back the next day so that he can have time to mobilize the women, as well as give them proper notice of the proposed discussion
  • They were... kids. Teenage girls.
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  • I was shocked. Then it dawned on me, "aah, girl-child marriages." After asking, I found the girls' ages ranged from 13 to 18, with two being 24. This then spurred me into action and it was the beginning of a decade-plus journey of understanding girl-child marriages in my country and fighting for the practice to end.
  • In 2010, half of the women (50%) aged 20--24 years were married or in a union before age 18 (compared to 6.4%of boys), while 12% of women married before they were 15 compared to only 1.2% of men. Child marriage is in both rural and urban areas. It is also higher than the regional average for sub-Saharan Africa (37%).
  • This law was born amid the outcry against girl-child marriage, as the country had realized the dangers of girl-child marriage.Save for a few areas, it is a very progressive piece of legislation, particularly from a women's rights perspective. Among other things, the law prohibits marriage for anybody below the age of 18.
  • studies have shown that girl-child marriage is a risk factor in the transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, as young wives do not have much bargaining power to negotiate safe sex with older men.
  • Girl-child marriages need to be prohibited tough the Constitution because they are a violation of every conceivable human right including the right to life, health, education, human dignity and development. What I know for sure child marriage is a guarantee for poverty among girls in my country and I want it to end. No ifs or buts.
sgardner35

Opinion: Both parties must lead on immigration - CNN.com - 0 views

  • President Obama won re-election thanks in part to a 52-percentage-point spread among Latino voters, the nation's fastest-growing electorate, according to election eve polling. In the America coming over the horizon, it is practically impossible to overcome such a number and win the race for president.According to the polling by Latino Decisions, Hispanic voters nationally and across every battleground state swung heavily to Democrats.
  • Nationwide, the margin was 75% to 23%. And there were remarkable spreads in the tightest of swing states: 87% to 10% in Colorado, 82% to 17% in Ohio, 66% to 31% in Virginia. (CNN's own poll showed a smaller but still significant spread nationwide -- 71% to 21% -- and in the swing states).
  • law enforcement and business leaders have worked with immigrant leaders across the political spectrum to forge a new consensus on immigrants and America.
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  • And job creators, people who own businesses, are yearning for common-sense reforms too. We know we need to find a solution when Larry Wooten, president of the North Carolina Farm Bureau, says, "The longer national political leaders ignore the issue or use it as a political wedge, the more our farmers suffer because they cannot find a sufficient labor pool to harvest their crops."
  • When it comes to crafting a 21st century immigration process, Bibles, badges and business are ready to work with both Democrats and Republicans to reach a consensus.Americans are ready for a just immigration system that treats all people with dignity and respect. Our leaders in Washington -- of both parties -- can and must deliver.
sgardner35

The killing of Syria (Opinion) - CNN.com - 0 views

  • The United Nations says 42,000 people in the area are at risk of starvation. And they make up only a fraction of the 400,000 in similar situations in other towns -- and millions more struggling in hard-to-reach areas -- because of the country's civil war, which is about to mark its five-year anniversary. Millions more Syrians have become refugees abroad.When a conflict lasts this long, when reports about the suffering it is inflicting become a relentless wave of depressing news, and when the forces at play are this complicated, many people are tempted to turn
  • The truth is that this war is not about to end anytime soon. It is a conflict in which the various sides are fighting for power, for territory, for sectarian advantage, for religion and ideology, but one in which no one seems to be fighting for the interests of the Syrian people themselves.Killing civilians, starving them, is a now common military tactic in the Syrian war.
  • The United Nations says it wants "unimpeded humanitarian access" to reach everyone who needs help in Syria. The latest word from the Assad regime is that it will allow food convoys. But pressure must be exerted so he keeps his word, and prevents the crisis from reoccurring here or elsewhere. One convoy, as we have already seen, does not end the siege.Assad has laid siege to other places before, notably Yarmouk, a Palestinian camp, and Eastern Ghouta, in the suburbs of Damascus. Yet for some reason the plight of the residents never seemed to reach the level of international concern expressed over fighting in Gaza or the actions of ISIS.
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  • Just like the videos of children choking on chlorine gas, or of desperate relatives trying to dig their families from the rubble of homes demolished by Assad's barrel bombs, the images of starvation in Madaya are making their way across Syria and the Middle East. Those images are likely radicalizing the population, firing up emotions and creating pressure on other regimes to take action. They also add to the enmity between (pro-Assad, Shiite) Iran and (anti-Assad, Sunni) Saudi Arabia, fueling the fury that makes young men want to join violent sectarian groups, which in turn helps expand the ranks of extremist groups like ISIS.
  • is fueling the rage that keeps this conflict burning and growing. It is extreme human suffering that is helping to solidify a most extreme ideology, one filled with hatred and mistrust, one that is spilling out of Syria -- across the Middle East and into the streets of Paris and San Bernardino, California.
sgardner35

The real question on gun control - CNN.com - 0 views

  • The President reminded the audience that Americans have different relationships with gun ownership because we live in "different realities." A black high-schooler in Chicago, where 55 people were shot in the past seven days, for example, has a very "different reality" from the high-schooler in a rural area who grew up shooting a rifle for sport.
  • The room was split between people who are willing to try, even if there's no guarantee, and those who need a guarantee -- proof -- before they will try. Between optimism and resignation.The majority of Americans, Republicans and gun owners support universal background checks and closing the so-called "gun show loophole." In fact, one objection that came up repeatedly pointed up a grim irony: Obama's step forward is so small that "it won't work."
  • He said that there were 30,000 American's who were killed by gun violence. What if we could just lower it to 28,000? What if we could spare 2,000 families from the heartbreak of that kind of loss? Shouldn't we try?
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  • Over and over, the President explained that his proposal will not affect most people's ability to buy a gun and it will not eliminate all gun violence. He repeatedly stated it will eliminate current channels that criminals do take advantage of to purchase guns. If one of every 30 guns sold online is purchased by a felon, as the President suggested, why wouldn't we try and stop that from happening?Tonight, the President wa
  • modest, respectful and reasonable. He was there to listen and to have a conversation. It was a conversation about gun control yes, but it was wrapped inside a bigger theme -- the nature of change.
sgardner35

What's wrong with the State of the Union (Opinions) - CNN.com - 0 views

  • The rest of the month we get the jockeying and posturing of presidential candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire. In countless town halls and meet-and-greets, as polls come in more frequently and the pressure intensifies, they'll all strive for that oxymoronic sweet spot of manufactured authenticity.What keeps us watching all this stagecraft is the possibility of something veering sharply from script -- the chance of a gaffe or a break in protocol, the unplanned moment that reveals the person beneath or that perfectly captures a conflict.
  • Indeed, watching him made me wonder: What if politicians across the spectrum committed to a new ritual -- speaking to groups composed entirely of people from the other party? There would be no one to cheer your partisan points. No one would let you off the hook if you tried to avoid a tough topic.Bernie Sanders made a much-publicized speech last fall to the evangelical and conservative students at Liberty University in Virginia, then took questions. This was the right idea. How would the other Democrats have done in a true give-and-take on the Liberty campus?
  • The occasion revealed just how wired people have become to hear what they want to hear. The President spoke of Australia, a country that in the aftermath of a gun massacre took societywide steps to reduce gun violence. His critics, gun-rights advocates, heard him calling for confiscation of firearms. He described reasonable steps to stem a public health crisis. His critics heard him trashing the Constitution.
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  • For one thing, it would reveal which of our politicians is capable of actually listening to the other side. Who has something to say after the talking points are exhausted? Who is willing to learn in the midst of fierce disagreement? That's a far better measure of fitness for a governing role than whether you can fire up your base.
  • Yes, some politicians would avoid such a setup because of the risk of being exposed as a one-note ideologue. And some politicians in the lion's den might feel tempted to sharpen differences, to make a performance of their contempt for the mob from the other party. But this is where we, the people, come in: We'd have to act like something other than a mob. The setup of the ritual --- many of us, one of them --- would nudge us to treat the visiting political figure with a measure of civility and to engage her or him in good faith. With ground rules that allow the politician to speak without being bullied or drowned out, we could set in motion a contagion of respect.
sgardner35

MLK Day turns 30: Why we observe it - CNN.com - 0 views

  • This Monday, we commemorate the 30th anniversary of the federal holiday in honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.It's a holiday that thankfully has been gaining in recognition since Congress passed a bill and President Ronald Reagan signed it in 1983, designating the third Monday in January, starting in 1986, to honor the civil rights leader. For years, some states declined to participate in the holiday, and Arizona lost the opportunity to host a Super Bowl over it. In 2000, South Carolina became the last state to recognize the holiday.
  • Had an assassin's bullet not taken his life at the age of 39, King would have turned 87 on Friday.Read MoreHad he lived, I believe King would have continued to inspire hope and would challenge us to fulfill his dream of a more inclusive society -- where everyone would have an equal opportunity for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
  • Not only are we reopening old wounds with regard to confrontation with law enforcement, we are also relitigating everything from voting rights to affirmative action. And now we confront, for the second year in a row, Hollywood -- which somehow ignores the talent of people of color when it comes to the Oscars.
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  • It was his faith, determination and hope, as much as his words, that sustained and inspired a generation to be actively engaged in the political process as voters -- and thus working to transform our nation by electing men and women of valor who sought to remove barriers and open once-closed doors to all. That was part of King's vision -- as he stated back in 1957 when he called on the country to "give us the ballot."King once said, "If you can't run, then walk. If you can't walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward."
  • No one knew better than King of disappointment, yet he remained determined not to be discouraged. He saw in his own lifetime that racism was shifting from malicious, violent discrimination to softer means such as excluding people from voting, or from access to promotions in the workplace, or from access to certain careers, or from ever being able to rise above hand-to-mouth wages and salaries.
  • Finally, King believed in diversity. Diversity, the chorus of different voices, should be a song of harmony. As Americans, we cannot deny our heritage, our individual cultures, but rather we must continue to bring all that is good and just to the civic enterprise. King's legacy is action in the service of others. For he believed that "not everybody can be famous, but everybody can be great, because greatness is determined by service.
  • So, whether on the job or off, let's use this day to commit ourselves to service through acts of goodness and kindness. Let's continue his work in the vineyards of justice and equality for all. And let us begin to live in what King called "the fierce urgency of now."
sgardner35

Syria says Islamic State killed 300 in attacks in country's east - The Boston Globe - 0 views

  • The state-run SANA news agency said most of those killed in Saturday’s attacks were elderly people, women, and children, while opposition activists said many of the victims were Syrian soldiers and progovernment militiamen and their families.
  • The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which documents the conflict through activists on the ground, said at least 135 people were killed. It said about 80 of them were soldiers and progovernment militiamen and the rest civilians. It added that many of them were shot to death or beheaded.The Islamic State controls most of Deir el-Zour province and much of the capital with the same name.
sgardner35

American Missionary Among the Dead in Burkina Faso Siege - The New York Times - 0 views

  • A State Department spokesman, John Kirby, identified the victim as Michael James Riddering. Mr. Kirby said that Mr. Riddering was killed during the course of the attack on two hotels, the Splendid and the Yibi, and a restaurant, Cappuccino Cafe, that sparked a 15-hour standoff in the heart of Ouagadougou, the capital.
  • Mr. Riddering, 45, was a missionary who worked at the Les Ailes de Re
  • fuge Orphanage in the town of Yako, 70 miles from the capital, according to a statement from the organization that runs the orphanage, Sheltering Wings. It said that he moved to Burkina Faso from Florida, where he sold boats, in 2011 with his wife, Amy, and daughter Delaney to do missionary work.
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  • “My heart is so heavy and I am having trouble believing he is gone,” she added. “Mike was an example in the way he lived and loved. God be glorified!”On Saturday, the missionary organization provided a detailed account of Mr. Riddering’s trip to Ouagadougou. It said he went to the capital on Friday with a co-worker, identified only as Pastor Valentin, to meet a group of missionaries who had just arrived from the United States.
  • “It appears that Pastor Valentin was somehow separated from Mike during the attack and hid somewhere in the Cappuccino Cafe,” the missionary group said.The pastor was later rescued by security forces but did not know what had happened to Mr. Riddering, and for many hours it was unclear. Another missionary, Philip Matheny, found his body on Saturday in a morgue.Sheltering Wings said that in addition to his wife and daughter Delaney, Mr. Riddering is survived by three other children Haley, Biba and Moise.
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