Irene's Weblog

Indian president, Sonia Gandhi, has an ambitious food project for her country. Her ultimate goal is to provide food subsidies, ensuring that none of her citizens ever have to starve again. Gandhi’s plan has been met with vocal criticism, largely due to complaints that it will be impossible to implement, it is just an election ploy, and that the government lacks the funds to even begin such a project.

The bill, if it became law and was fully implemented, would cost the national exchequer Rs 1.1 lakh crore ($22 billion) annually in agriculture liabilities alone, but would provide subsidized food grain to more than 60 percent of the country’s population.

Pawar had opposed the bill at a meeting of the union cabinet in December, but it was passed without discussion when it was brought before the full cabinet a week later. As Sanjay Kumar noted here last month, the draft bill is set to offer “significant government subsidies for staples like rice and wheat for India’s poorest citizens, and effectively gives a legal right to food for roughly two-thirds of the country’s 1.2 billion people.”

The bill vows that there will be hot mid-day meals provided for children up to 14 years of age, and Rs 6,000 ($121) for all pregnant and lactating women. As noted by NDTV, it also promises 75 percent of rural population and 50 percent of urban households the right to 7 kilograms of food grains per person per month, at Rs.3 per kg for rice, Rs.2 per kg for wheat and Rs.1 per kg for coarse grains to the beneficiaries.

Gandhi’s government hopes to have the program in place by the time of the next general election in 2014, but many questions remain about the viability of the program. In the past, India has announced new schemes that appear to be beneficial to the country but they are rarely passed due to the costs involved. Other projects, such as building rural roads and better education, have seen the country take small steps out of poverty.

Feeding the people and ensuring a hot midday meal is another way to eliminate poverty. If a person does not have to worry about where their next meal is coming from, they can spend the time on further education of looking for work. A temporary meal assistance plan would help in those goals. Most first world nations recognize that food is a basic right and have implemented programs to help prevent starvation amongst their populations.

India must, however, prevent herself from turning into a nanny state as well as curb the corruption that plagues many Indian communities. When this has been attempted in the past, politicians have always taken a cut of the money meant for the projects and/or disbursed food items disproportionately.

Children should also not have to worry about where their next meal is coming from. They should be in school being educated instead of working for meager pay and the hope of a bowl of rice at the end of the day. By ensuring an education and a hot meal for children, India can start a reversal of current economic trends. Once those children have finished school, they will enter the workforce, spurring the economic growth that India needs.

The Indian government needs to decided if this scheme will be implemented at the state level or federal level. Then, it needs to place cutoffs for how long a person can receive benefits to avoid a cycle of lifelong dependence on the government. This program should be of temporary assistance and there should be other programs combined with it to assist people in finding jobs and moving off of government assistance.

The bottom line is that it should not matter how young, old, stupid, or ignorant a person is, no one should ever face starvation. If you are better off and do not need this type of assistance, then it is your responsibility as a human being to help those less fortunate.

If the Indian government can implement this program without disrupting the current agricultural markets, eliminate corruption in the scheme, and make it work in conjunction with other programs to help eliminate poverty, then it Indian government should at least try.

This article was originally published at The Daily Censored.

Every day, millions of American children are forced to start their school day by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. They are told by their principals that it is required, but it is not. The Pledge is considered to be an oath of allegiance and it is a “government-sanctioned endorsement of religion,” that “violates the Establishment Clause of the first amendment to the US Constitution.”

The history of the Pledge shows that it is not, and never was, a pledge set in stone. It has been controversial since it began and continues to be so today. During its lifetime, it has been changed four times. The origin of the Pledge also was never intended as an oath of loyalty. It was designed to encourage people to buy more flags from one particular flag-making company.

The original Pledge of Allegiance was created by Francis Bellamy in 1892 as part of a campaign to sell more flags. It was not formally adopted by the United States until 1942 when the US Congress officially approved it.

The biggest objections to the Pledge have been on the grounds of religion. Those who oppose it cite the Pledge’s violation of the Establishment Clause in the first amendment to the Constitution. These objections on the basis of religion were well established by the time “under God” was added in 1954.

In 1940, the Supreme Court ruled that it was permissible to force students to recite the Pledge. Fortunately, in 1943, the Supreme Court reversed that ruling, forbidding a school from mandatory Pledge recitations. In West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, the Supreme Court concluded that the first amendment provides protection to students who do not wish to participate in certain types of speech. This extends to adults as well. The Court also said that the United States government cannot force a person to recite any type of speech.

In oft-quoted language, Justice Robert Jackson wrote: “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

Despite this ruling, the Pledge remains in most public schools, with many students compelled to recite the pledge due to peer pressure, teacher and administration pressure, and fears of detention.

In 1954, “under God” was added to the Pledge to distinguish the United States from a perceived “Commie threat.” By adding “under God,” the United States aimed to make it known to the world that it was a religious nation, wholly separate and different from the Soviet Union, which was Communist and, supposedly, atheist. In doing so, the United States unconstitutionally endorsed religion as a part of the government. Since then, there have been repeated, and numerous, attempts to remove “under God” from the Pledge as well as remove it from schools altogether.

In 1978, the Pledge was back in court. In the case of Lipp v. Morris, the 3rd US Court of Appeals ruled that a New Jersey statute that required standing for the pledge was unconstitutional. Both the Supreme Court and the 3rd US Court of Appeals emphasized the fact that no one could be forced to stand and recite the pledge. To do otherwise would be forcing a citizen to conform to a particular type of conduct or expression of a government official.

In 2003, US District Court Judge Lewis Babcock ruled that neither teachers nor any member of staff can be forced to recite or participate in the Pledge. Judge Babcock stated that it does not matter who you are because, “It is beyond the power of the authority of the government to compel the recitation of the Pledge of allegiance.”

In 2005, another Us District judge, Lawrence Karlton, ruled that California had violated the Establishment Clause by requiring all students to recite the Pledge. In his ruling, Judge Karlton stated that he was bound by a 2002 precedent by the 9th US District Court of Appeals. In his brief, Judge Karlton affirmed that being forced to say, “One nation under God,” was coercing a person to state that a god exists.

In 2006, the 11th Circuit Court ruled in Frazier v. Alexandre that students couldn’t be forced to stand at attention because violated the First Amendment, however, it also ruled that students are allowed to be excused from the Pledge only at the written request of a parent. Even then, they would still be required to stand for the Pledge. The US Supreme Court and the 11th Circuit court has since refused to hear any further appeals in the case.

In the West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette case, the Supreme Court concluded, “The action of a State in making it compulsory for children in the public schools to salute the flag and pledge allegiance…violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.” The Court further stated that the decision was not made in regard to the religion of the person who refused to comply. It clarified that forced standing and recitation of a pledge “is not a permissible means of achieving ‘national unity.’”

The phrase, “under God” in the Pledge continues to be controversial with the Supreme Court opting to not hear appeals from lower courts. While many say that “under God” doesn’t specify any particular religion, it is a disingenuous comment from those who know very well that it is specifically referencing the Christian god. Jews us the word Hashem when referencing god while Muslims use Allah. There are those, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, who are forbidden from reciting oaths of any kind. Atheists do not recognize the existence of any god and feel that the Pledge is a defacto affirmation of one. This doesn’t even take into account the numerous other religious practitioners in the United States.

While the courts contend that “under God” is not an endorsement of any particular religion, the fact remains that, because so many people believe it is a reference to a specific god, the courts do not want to admit the Pledge is oppressive and offensive to millions of Americans. If a person believes in a god, it is reasonable for them to also believe that their country stands only because their god allows it. The Declaration of Independence, however, tells us that our government gets its powers from its citizens, not any god.

The recitation of the Pledge should be completely removed from the public school system. It is impossible for anyone to argue that a 5-year old fully understands the implications of either reciting the Pledge or opting out. They do it because their friends and classmates do it or because a parent tells them to. By the time they become old enough to understand what the Pledge says, they are merely reciting it because they are told to do so or else there will be some sort of punishment meted out to them. They don’t want to say it, but they don’t want to stand out or be punished, so they cave in and abide by the wishes of their teachers and administrators instead of being yelled at for choosing to express their rights.

James Perry wrote and excellent piece several years ago entitled, “What I expect My Child to Learn From Not Saying the Pledge of Allegiance.” In it, Perry details what an allegiance is and why it is an obligation of loyalty and devotion. If an allegiance is obligatory, then there is no choice, despite what numerous judges and Pledge advocates say. Pledging your allegiance is “pledging the fidelity of a subject owed to his sovereign or government.” Those are not the ideals of the founding fathers nor is it in our law.

Perhaps if American citizens spent more time learning that the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are what define America, and not a flag, they would even see how our freedoms are continually absorbed by the central government with each passing crisis. To cite just a few examples of the process: the War between the States ended states rights and brought the first income tax. The Second World War brought us income tax withholding. The latest crisis has caused a massive expansion in the central government including “random” searches of pregnant women before they board airplanes “to protect us.”

If Americans studied these documents they might come to the conclusion that the pledge is antithetical to the spirit of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. The spirit of those documents is not one of subservient vassals of the state, but of sovereign citizens. The nation is only indivisible to our detriment and for the strengthening of the central state. The War Between the States was a bloody suppression of freedom. Slaves were ultimately freed, but all of us are now subservient to the Federal government. The new King George resides in Washington, D.C.

One should never be forced to recite anything they feel uncomfortable with, especially if it is in violation of our Constitution. No school child should ever be forced to pledge their allegiance to something they cannot fully understand. Blind patriotism and indoctrination of children through the Pledge of Allegiance makes a mockery of the United States. Neither a child nor an adult should have to be faced with swearing their allegiance to the United States on a daily basis.

It would be best to eliminate the Pledge from education altogether as it is an antiquated oath that many do not believe in. Children should be educated in the history of the Pledge of Allegiance, but continually forcing them to recite it should be stopped. We are not now, nor have we ever been one nation under the same god.

Image from Wikipedia.

This post originally appeared on The Daily Censored.

Censorship on the internet should never be allowed in any form. We often think of censorship, particularly online, as happening in far away places such as China, Egypt, Iran, or Saudi Arabia, but it occurs everywhere and it’s increasing. Currently, in most parts of the world, you can access every nook and cranny of the internet. Many groups and individuals, however, believe that certain portions of the internet should be censored. The reasons are varied, but include things people find offensive or illegal. These are two areas that should never be censored.

Filtering offensive material is something that is completely objective and it will, eventually, lead to internet morality police who will have the final say in what is and is not objectionable. Allowing others to assume what you would deem to be offensive is highly illogical. At some point in time, your favorite sites will be censored. If you are in favor of censoring places that you find objectionable, your favorite internet haunts will also be offensive to someone else. When that happens, who will you petition to have it removed from a blacklist?

Many people believe that there should be sites, such as kiddie porn, that should be off limits to everyone. While I wholeheartedly agree that kiddie porn is vile and disgusting, I would not censor those. I abhor censorship of any kind, but if you start with one subgroup or category, you eventually go down the road of mission creep. It won’t stop with kiddie porn. Next will be fetish porn, then regular porn, then scantily clad women, and on and on.

Preventing access to what you consider unsavory may seem like a noble task, but where does it stop? It opens the door to more censorship and sends those who are actually breaking the law, further underground. Filesharing and free speech will, eventually, be sent to the same place. Subcultures, no matter how pleasant or vile, form regardless of geographical location. If you live in America and find scantily clad women distasteful, you cannot ban or censor it worldwide. Trying to outlaw any subculture is exactly the same as trying to change a law in another country because you don’t like it. Americans do not appreciate it when we are told what to do, and neither does anyone else. Because you go to the internet, it doesn’t come to you, if you don’t like something, don’t go looking for it.

I have been on the internet since 1993 and I have never come across kiddie porn. I know from reading that, if you search certain places, you can find it, but why would I want to? I have no need for that particular part of the internet, so I don’t go there. Let it serve as a honeypot for the government. If you remove such sites, you will, inevitably, go down the slippery slope towards censoring free speech and dissent. Silencing expression, no matter how distasteful to the individual, diminishes us all.

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

The internet allows us to challenge ideas, new and old, to seek a better understanding of humanity, and to discuss issues with people from all around the world. Censoring the internet moves humanity backwards into a time of limited and carefully crafted information. We then no longer have the ability to question or examine data. We can’t debate the information because access to its source will be forbidden. It is far better to question beliefs and practices than to crush technological developments.

In the long run, censorship will only hinder our species from advancements in technology, the arts, and philosophy. We should not be forced to keep quiet because our ideas run counter to other groups.

“if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.” ~John Stuart Mill

The censors cannot win. As with anything that has been censored or made illegal, gray markets arise to route around the imposed censor. For most people, censorship will create a false sense of security. They will believe that it’s being done for the greater good. For those who value the free exchange of ideas, there will be a never-ending battle with the censors. There already are dozens of programs that can route around a censor with more being developed every day. One only needs to look at China to see what happens when government enforced censorship is enacted. The internet is a worldwide public forum. Censoring any part of it is censoring free speech and public assembly. We have already seen what happens when this is done offline. We object when public dissent is censored at climate summits, G20 and G8 events, protests and political conventions. We should do the same for the internet.

Although we may not want to see it, having access to graphic torture images, animal abuse, and human rights abuses allows us to be more aware of the world around us. It can easily assemble people to help end these situations because it puts a very real human, or animal, face to the problem.

Unless the entire world can agree on what to censor, any attempt at censorship will be futile because different countries have different senses of morality that constantly conflict with other countries. The internet treats everything as equal. The establishment does not understand this and continues to try to police it with old ways of thinking. Unfortunately, for those in power, humans rarely act the way you want them to. They don’t do as they are told. They don’t believe what you want them to. And they certainly don’t behave as you want them to.

Any kind of protectionism, be it censorship, surveillance, or security theater, deprives humans of the vital interaction that they crave. Policing yourself should be all the censorship you need. If you do not want your children to go to certain places on the internet, police your own internet access. Telling adults that they cannot curse, read erotic stories, or look at porn is invoking your own morality on others. Your responsibility concerns yourself and your children. It should never concern your neighbors or strangers halfway around the world.

If you attempt to censor the internet, you will not eliminate the ideas you do not like. People will just go further underground and continue to share them in secret. Are you willing to risk all this so that you can censor child pornography? Do you still believe that censoring the internet will eliminate child porn? Or do you understand that it will push child porn further underground, making if far more difficult to find and prosecute?

Governments want the internet censored because the internet is exposing the mass corruption going on. If they are corrupt now, how can you trust them not to misuse a child porn censor once it is in place? Censorship will, eventually, become a tool of power, such as it is China and North Korea, rather than a service of dumb pipes connected to share ideas and exercise free speech.

Every government on Earth has failed to give a valid reason for censorship. Their reasons always involve crushing dissent and free speech. It has never been, nor will it ever be, to protect anyone but themselves.

This is the full text of my article from The Daily Censored. Feel free to check out all the other stories at The Daily Censored as well.

This is the full text of my article from The Daily Censored. Feel free to check out all the other stories at The Daily Censored as well.

When 9/11 first occurred, many people were devastated. Speculations ran around in the early days, but the American government assured us that it was masterminded by Osama bin Laden who had hired and trained Saudi nationals to complete the task. Eventually, it was claimed that Saddam Hussein was also involved and that we needed to invade Iraq, leaving us fighting two fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan. A few years later, after we’ve captured Hussein, we’re told bin Laden isn’t all that important and that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the evil mastermind behind 9/11. He was, apparently, part of al-Qaida, so there was still a need to capture bin Laden, but Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the person who is responsible for the entire mess we have gotten ourselves into. He has now confessed to numerous plots ranging from the Daniel Pearl murder to the Richard Reid shoe bombings.

Since 9/11 we have seen the shift in responsibility for the event shift to suit the needs of those in power in the American government. First, we went into Afghanistan because that’s where we were told Osama bin Laden was. Next, we moved on to Iraq because there was some convoluted claims about a connection between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Anyone who understood the region and the people involved knew this was not true, but the story was sold to the American people and the United States invaded and overthrew the Iraqi regime.

Now that we have pulled out of Iraq, at the request of the Iraqi government, the American government feels the need to shift the blame of 9/11 yet again to its newly perceived enemy, Iran. This past week, a New York judge found that Tehran is liable in the 9/11 attacks.

On Thursday, Judge George Daniels in Manhattan signed a default judgment finding Iran, the Taliban and al-Qaida liable in the 2001 attacks. The ruling came in a $100 billion lawsuit brought by family members of victims.

The findings also said Iran provides al-Qaida members a safe haven.

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly denied any Iranian connection to the Sept. 11 attacks or to al-Qaida.

CBS News has more details on the findings.

Daniels signed findings of fact saying the plaintiffs had established that the 2001 attacks were caused by the support the defendants provided to al Qaeda. The findings also said Iran continues to provide material support and resources to al Qaeda by providing a safe haven for al Qaeda leadership and rank-and-file al Qaeda members.

During last week’s open-court hearing, family members of Sept. 11 victims sat through a four-hour presentation from attorneys who cited evidence supporting their claims that Iran actively assisted the hijackers of planes that crashed into the World Trade Center towers, at the Pentagon and into a field in Pennsylvania. Former members of the Sept. 11 Commission and three Iranian defectors also spoke.

The judge accepted as fact the Plaintiff’s evidence solely because the other party, in this case the country of Iran, did not show up in court. Iran has repeatedly stated that they have no involvement with al-Quaida.

Saudi Arabia had been knocked out of the lawsuit, but lawyers filed papers on Thursday to reinstate Saudi Arabia as a defendant.

Saudi Arabia. The home of 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers. Why was it knocked out of the lawsuit? Why is there no responsibility placed on Saudi Arabia?

The story is now out there. Just how many countries are ultimately going to be responsible for 9/11?Will the American people blindly accept these findings or will they actually question what is happening before the United States gets itself involved in another war?

This is the full text of my article from The Daily Censored. Feel free to check out all the other stories at The Daily Censored as well.

Researchers at Wuhan University, National Research Council of Canada and the Center for Functional Genomics at the University at Albany have been working together to create GMO rice that contains human blood protein chemically identical to human serum albumin. This protein is normally obtained by extracting it from blood donors. It is then used to treat patients with burns and liver disease, but blood donors can now be bypassed with a GMO synthetic version.

Yang and his colleagues inserted the gene encoding HSA into their rice plants in such a way that the gene was activated during seed production, and the resulting protein was stored in the rice grain along with nutrients normally used to help nurture a germinating embryo. The final product was a crop of rice seeds in which HSA made up more than 10% of the seeds’ total soluble protein — one of the best yields of recombinant protein from plants to date.

It was relatively simple for Yang to extract HSA from the grains. Because the rice genome was completed in 2005, he was able to use this information to separate the human protein from those of rice.

The rice-derived protein was shown to be functionally equivalent to the version found in human blood plasma. Not only were the two chemically and physically identical, but they were also similar when tested for medical efficacy and immune reactivity. In rats with liver disease, both types of HSA proved equally effective in relieving symptoms associated with cirrhosis. And rats that were given rice-derived HSA showed no stronger immune reaction than animals that had been given the plasma-derived version.

Yang aims to move into human testing next. He has submitted his first clinical-trial application to the US Food and Drug Administration, and hopes to begin testing the rice-derived HSA in humans within the next two years.

This new crop, however, is not without its own concerns.

Large-scale planting of genetically modified rice fields that could produce enough seed for mass production of the protein also raises environmental and food supply contamination concerns, since rice is a major world food staple.

However, the study authors noted that rice is a largely self-pollinating crop, pointing to previous studies that showed “a very low frequency (0.04-0.80%) of pollen-mediated gene flow between genetically modified (GM) rice and adjacent non-GM plants.”

Since we haven’t been able to keep GMO crops from accidentally cross-pollinating with non-GMO crops, more studies need to be done before the rice crop ever goes into production.

More research is needed to evaluate the safety of the rice-derived protein in animals and humans before it can be considered for the market.

Considering the fact that anything that has been genetically modified does not have to be labeled in the United States, do we really want our rice to contain a human blood protein, or any other drug, vitamin, or whatever else they can put in it on the market without the general knowledge of the public? It doesn’t matter how small an amount the researchers say it is. Once it’s placed into our food chain, it’s there for good so that someone else can make money while the general population becomes a giant petri dish of experiments.