All posts by Nativegrl77

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Republican Rebranding?


GOPreda repost

GOP’s Outreach to Women, Minorities Found Wanting

As MSNBC’s Steve Benen noted, the GOP’s outreach to minorities has hit a rough patch — again. Check out this parade of outrageous stories — all from just today:

    1.

Republican Congressman comes out as a birther:

    Another congressman takes a stand against

President Obama

    and his “phony” birth certificate.
    2.

GOP Senate candidate tweets racist attack on African-American opponent Cory Booker:

    The tweet, which has since been deleted, read “#breaking just leaked – Cory Booker’s foreign policy debate prep notes,” and included an image of the

city of Newark

    divided up according to various ethnicities.
    3.

POLITICO publishes op-ed from conservative citing junk science questioning the intelligence of Hispanics:

    Why is a major publication publishing a piece suggesting white people are smarter than Hispanics?
    4.

GOP Congressman and Senate candidate Tom Cotton in 1997: A woman’s ‘deepest hope in life’ is ‘being a good wife and mother’:

    A woman’s “greatest fear in life” is losing a man’s support, Cotton wrote.
    5.

Scott Walker appointee fired after he called undocumented immigrants ‘Satan’:

    The third-highest ranking member of Wisconsin’s Department of Transportation sees “Satan” when he looks at undocumented people.
~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Discrimination Against Women Alive and Well in 2013


by Think Progress

Earlier this week the Center for American Progress and ELLE magazine released a poll that unpacks what professional men and women think about “leaning in.”

Disappointingly, nearly one-third of women reported having personally experienced discrimination at work. Women at the top were 45 percent more likely to say they have experienced discrimination. Some 20 percent of men in the survey agreed that they’d be paid less if they were a woman.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of stories to underscore what women in the CAP/Elle poll reported. ThinkProgress’ Tara Culp-Ressler and Bryce Covert round up five startling examples of how employers turn women into sex objects at work:

A New Jersey judge ruled that casino waitresses can be fired for gaining weight.

Twenty two former cocktail servers sued a popular casino in Atlantic City over a policy that forbids waitresses from gaining more than seven percent of their original body weight. The women were subject to regular weigh-ins, and the policy meant that a 130-pound woman was not allowed to gain more than 9.1 pounds. They alleged it was weight discrimination — but an Atlantic County Superior Court Judge disagreed. In July, the judge ruled that casino waitresses are essentially “sex objects,” and it’s okay to fire them for gaining weight because they are no longer fulfilling their contractual obligations.

A widely-used employee training manual tells women how to make sure they don’t lead men on.

Earlier this week, Jezebel reported that a popular manager training guide — used as companies like Google, Groupon, and Modcloth — essentially tells women that they’re responsible for preventing advances from their male co-workers. The manual tells women who are “touchy-feely or flirtatious by nature” to “dial it back,” suggests women socialize in groups, and advises women to avoid “revealing clothing” or “ending statements with an upward inflection.”

Women at Merrill Lynch have been instructed to seduce their way to the top.

Other employee trainings have similarly gone off the rails when it comes to guidance on women’s behavior in the workplace. Female employees at Merrill Lynch allege they were made to read a book called “Seducing the Boys Club: Uncensored Tactics From a Woman at the Top” and to make use of its advice to get ahead. To get men to do their work, the book suggested “play[ing] on their masculine pride and natural instincts to protect the weaker sex.” To diffuse tense situations, it pointed out that men “puff up” at being told, “Wow, you look great. Been working out?” The women also allege that they were pressured to attend female-only events on “dressing for success” and were told to be more “perky” and “bubbly.”

The Iowa Supreme Court decided it’s okay to fire attractive women if they pose a risk to men’s marriages.

James Knight, a dentist in Iowa, didn’t fire his female assistant Melissa Nelson after 10 years of working for him because of performance reasons. Instead, Nelson alleges that Knight’s wife told him to do it because “she was a big threat to our marriage” given that he was sexually attracted to her. Yet in July, the all-male Iowa Supreme Court stood by an earlier decision that she wasn’t improperly fired because it wasn’t gender discrimination. Instead, her firing was found permissible because of the facts surrounding her relationship with Knight, such as several comments he made about her clothing and the fact that they texted each other after work hours.

Two hotel employees were fired after they complained about being photoshopped onto bikini-clad bodies.

Two sisters, Martha and Lorena Reyes, say they were fired from the Hyatt Hotel in Santa Clara, CA after they complained about photoshopped images of them. In the photos, the women’s heads were photoshopped onto the bodies of women wearing bikinis. Lorena told Jezebel that they were “extremely humiliating and shameful for me” and also said she has never worn a bikini, even at home. While the company says it fired them two days after they complained about the images because they took overly long breaks, the sisters feel it was related to the incident. The Reyes sisters have filed a retaliation charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Check out the rest of the CAP/ELLE poll HERE.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Our outcry is working! Great Barrier Train Wreck ~~ David Sievers – Avaaz.org


Our outcry is working! The Minister has delayed the dredging decision and announced a public consultation. Let’s ramp up the pressure until they kill the project for good — join now and share this with everyone!
Dear Avaazers,


The Great Barrier Reef is at risk of being dredged to make way for a mega coal project. But if one key investor walks away, the deal would be sunk and the World Heritage Site protected. We can convince them to pull out, or get PM Rudd to stop the plan, but we have to act now — sign this urgent petition to help save the Great Barrier Reef:

Sign now!

It would be hard to make this stuff up. Australia’s legendarily irresponsible mining industry has a new plan: while the planet faces catastrophic climate change, build the world’s largest coal mining complex, and then build a shipping lane to that port straight through the greatest ecological treasure we have – the Great Barrier Reef!
This is a terrible idea with devastating consequences, and the investor group Aurizon that’s backing it know it. They’re getting cold feet, and we might be able to push them over the edge, and kill the project. One of the main potential funders has even donated to climate activism!
If one million of us express our head-shaking disbelief at this crazy project in the next few days, we can help get Aurizon to pull funding and maybe even persuade the Australian PM to step in. This is what Avaaz is for, let’s raise a voice for common sense:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/australian_coal_disaster_global_rb/?biEWLbb&v=28206
The Great Barrier Reef — the largest living organism on Earth and home to a quarter of all the species that live in the world’s oceans — has slowly been dying for years.  It’s lost half its coral in the past three decades and that rate is only accelerating. Climate change is one cause, but so is Australia’s booming mining industry. The German magazine Der Spiegel reported that “if current trends continue, the unthinkable could happen: the Great Barrier Reef could die.”
And yet, the mining industry plans to build massive new ports at a complex called Abbot Point in Northeast Australia (right by the reef) to make it easier to get the coal it’s mining out to the world. Not only would that mean doubling the number of ships that pass by the reef each year and ripping up to 3 million cubic meters of material from the fragile seabed, but if all the coal from the proposed mines this would enable is burned, it would be three times Australia’s current climate pollution — hurtling us faster towards the point of no return.
The investors are meeting now to decide what to do and the Australian Environment Minister will choose whether to approve the project in the next two weeks. Our voices can signal to all of them to block this disaster, especially to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd if he hopes to maintain his global reputation in the lead-up to his re-election bid.
They’re all deciding what to do now. Sign this urgent petition and share it with everyone you know to stop the Great Barrier train wreck:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/australian_coal_disaster_global_rb/?biEWLbb&v=28206
The Avaaz community has been fighting to save the unparalleled beauty of the reef for years. Last year, Avaaz members threatened a public US Bank when they were set to invest in reef destruction. And hundreds of thousands of Avaaz members sent messages to the Australian Environment Minister to help win the largest marine reserve in the world. Let’s do it again and put the reef out of reach of these profiteering plunderers.
With hope and determination,
David, Alex, Emily, Lisa, Oli, Marie, Ricken, Alice and the whole Avaaz team
PS – Many Avaaz campaigns are started by members of our community. It’s easy to get started – click to start yours now and win on any issue – local, national or global: http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/start_a_petition/?bgMYedb&v=23917
MORE INFORMATION:
Great Barrier Reef Under Threat (TIME) http://www.avaaz.org/time_great_barrier_reef_article
‘Death By a Thousand Cuts’: Coal Boom Could Destroy Great Barrier Reef (Spiegel) http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/australia-debates-how-to-protect-the-great-barrier-reef-a-900911.html
GVK’s Australia coal project ‘a quagmire, not an investment’ says report (The Times of India) http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/GVKs-Australia-coal-project-a-quagmire-not-an-investment-says-report/articleshow/20651363.cms
Report- Stranded: Alpha Coal Project in Australia’s Galilee Basin (IEEFA) http://www.ieefa.org/report-stranded-alpha-coal-project-in-australias-galilee-basin/
GVK rejects claim Alpha is ‘stranded’ (The Age) http://www.theage.com.au/business/carbon-economy/gvk-rejects-claim-alpha-is-stranded-20130619-2oj96.html
Abbott Point Coal Mine Map (Greenpeace) http://www.greenpeace.org/australia/en/what-we-do/climate/resources/reports/Cooking-the-climate-Wrecking-the-reef/

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Ecuadorians Outraged with President’s Decision to Allow Drilling in Yasuní


Ecuadorians Outraged with President's Decision to Allow Drilling in Yasuní

In response to President Rafael Correa‘s decision to terminate the historic Yasuní-ITT initiative, an innovative plan to preserve the world’s most biodiverse rainforest in the Yasuní National Park, hundreds of Ecuadorians have taken to the streets to protest and are preparing a national referendum to reverse this decision.

The ground-breaking initiative launched in 2007 would keep some 920 million barrels of oil underneath the park permanently in the ground in exchange for financial contributions from the international community. The plan would also keep an estimated 410 million tons of CO2 – the major greenhouse gas driving climate change – from reaching the atmosphere.

But Correa, citing the proposal’s lack of contributions, signed a decree to liquidate the UNDP trust fund, and declared drilling in the national interest, a designation that sets in motion final approval from Congress to pursue drilling.

However, recent polls show that 90% of Ecuadorians support the Yasuní-ITT initiative, and at protests across the country they have begun to gather signatures for a national referendum that could reverse the president’s decision to allow drilling in this part of the park.

The park is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and contains what are thought to be the greatest number of tree and insect species anywhere on the planet. In just 2.5 acres of the park, there are as many tree species as in all of the U.S. and Canada combined. The area is also home to the Waorani indigenous people, and two nomadic Waorani clans – the Tagaeri and Taromenane – who live in voluntary isolation. Attempts to drill the ITT fields would put their lives and livelihoods at risk.Amazon Watch

 

 

Stay tuned for more information and ways to get involved! In the meantime, check out:

Viva Yasuní!

Kevin Koenig
Kevin Koenig
Ecuador Program Coordinator

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Isolated Mashco-Piro Indians appear in Peru


FILE - This Nov. 2011 file photo, shows members of the Mashco-Piro tribe, photographed at an undisclosed location near the Manu National Park in southeastern Peru. More than 100 Mashco-Piro appeared across a river from the remote community of Monte Salvado in Madre de Dios state, says Klaus Quicque the president of the regional FENAMAD indigenous federation on Monday, Aug. 19, 2013. The Maschco-Piro first appeared in May 2011 after more than two decades in voluntary isolation. (AP Photo/Diego Cortijo, Survival International, File)

for more click on photo above

FRANK BAJAK

AP

FILE – This Nov. 2011 file photo, shows members of the Mashco-Piro tribe,

photographed at an undisclosed area …

In another case of big corporations … Pushing Provoking the Mashco-Piro Indians  ~~ illegal logging drugs smugglers Oil Gas which also impacts the Amazon … and needs to stop.

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Members of an Indian tribe that has long lived in voluntary isolation in Peru‘s southeastern Amazon attempted to make contact with outsiders for a second time since 2011, leading to a tense standoff at a river hamlet.Authorities are unsure what provoked the three-day encounter but say the Mashco-Piro may be upset by illegal logging in their territory as well as drug smugglers who pass through.

Oil and gas exploration also affects the region.

The more than 100 members of Mashco-Piro clan appeared across the Las Piedras river from the remote community of Monte Salvado in the Tambopata region of Madre de Dios state from June 24-26, said Klaus Quicque, president of the regional FENAMAD indigenous federation.

They asked for bananas, rope and machetes from the local Yine people but were dissuaded from crossing the river by FENAMAD rangers posted at the settlement, said Quicque, who directed them to a banana patch on their side of the river.

The incident on the Las Piedras is chronicled in video shot by one of the rangers and obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

“You can see in the images there was a lot of threatening — the intention of crossing. They practically reached mid-river,” Quicque said by phone from Puerto Maldonado, the regional capital.

The video shows Mashco-Piro of all ages and sexes, including men with lances, bows and arrows. In one image shot during a moment of tension, a man flexes his bow, ready to shoot.

Quicque said the estimated 110-150 people living in Monte Salvado “feared for their lives.” He credited the ranger, Rommel Ponciano, for keeping a cool head.

He said 23 Mashco-Piro appeared on the first day, 110 on the second and 25 on the third. The clan left and hasn’t returned.

“They spoke a variant of Yine,” Quicque said, but Ponciano understood only about two-thirds of the words.

The Mashco-Piro live by their own social code, which includes kidnapping other tribes’ women and children, according to Carlos Soria, a Lima professor and former head of Peru’s park protection agency.

Peruvian law prohibits physical contact with the estimated 15 “uncontacted” tribes in Peru that together are estimated to number between 12,000 and 15,000 people living in jungles east of the Andes. The main reason is their safety: Their immune systems are highly vulnerable to germs other humans carry.

Anthropologist Beatriz Huertas, who works with Peru’s agency for indigenous affairs, says the Mashco-Piro are becoming increasingly less isolated. The tribe is believed to number in the hundreds in several different clans.

It is not unusual for them to appear where they did during a season of sparse rainfall when rivers are low, and they tend to be itinerant, she said.

“What’s strange is that they came so close to the population of Monte Salvado. It could be they are upset by problems of others taking advantage of resources in their territories and for that reason were demanding objects and food of the population,” Huertas said.

Naturalists in the area and national park officials say the tribe’s traditional hunting grounds have been affected by a rise in low-flying air traffic related to natural gas and oil exploration in the region.

Quicque said the Mashco-Piro were victimized by “genocide” in the mid-1980s from the incursion of loggers, and subsequently engaged in battles with mahogany-seekers.

Members of the group reappeared in May 2011 on the banks of a different river after more than two decades in voluntary isolation.

After those sightings, and after tourists left clothing for the Mashco-Piro, authorities barred all boats from going ashore in the area.

Mashco-Piro were blamed later in 2011 for the wounding of one forest ranger and the killing of a Matsiguenka Indian who had long maintained a relationship with them and provided them with machetes and cooking pots.