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Down East safety issues

As the members of the bargaining yeam for the Maine State Nurses Association, or MSNA, we felt we had to address statements made by the CEO of Down East Community Hospital in local media outlets.

We believe the issue here is absolutely a public health issue. The community relies upon a well staffed hospital; if there is a staffing shortage on any given shift or in any department that becomes a safety problem. At the heart of this dispute are staffing issues.

Management is insisting on an 11 percent pay cut for the night shift to be taken immediately. We have been trying to explain to the hospital that these differentials have been established to fill a need and were actually introduced by the hospital several years ago in order to recruit and retain employees for these areas. Traditionally it has always been more difficult to recruit and retain nurses on the night shift.

We have been through a lot in the last few years as a hospital. This is no time to talk about taking things away from the very employees who have been loyal to this hospital. In addition to the undersigned, this letter is written by the MSNA bargaining team; Karma Alley, LPN; Shirley Brown, RN; Cheryl Christie, MLT; Liz Faraci, RN and Scott Huber, CRT.

Veronica Conley, RN

MSNA

The EPA recently passed new standards that will slash emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants from the nations dirtiest power plants. This will clean up our air significantly.

In December 2011, President Obama signed into law the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, or MATS, which will slash toxic mercury air emissions by 90 percent. As the tailpipe state of the nation, this is great news for Maine. Nationwide, reports say this rule will save as many as 11,000 lives, prevent as many as 130,000 asthma attacks among children and prevent as many as 4,700 heart attacks each year, according to the EPA.

However, there is an attempt to undermine this lifesaving rule. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, is trying to use the obscure Congressional Review Act to kill the new mercury rule. If he succeeds in this cynical procedural ploy, hell not only kill EPA clean air standards, hell unwittingly be costing thousands of Americans their lives and health, particularly children who would otherwise live and suffer less by the new EPA rule. Doctors, nurses, scientists and public health professionals agree this is a standard to save lives and prevent illnesses.

Read more here:
Monday, March 5, 2012: Mercury emissions, same-sex marriage and birth control

Western media that is under absolute influence of Israeli lobby is trying to dampen the high voter turnout of Irans parliamentary elections.

The message from Iran is that the high turnout of 65 percent in the parliamentary elections is a response of loyalty against Western pressures and threats.

Press TV has interviewed Mark Dankof, former US Senate candidate from San Antonio about US media's purposeful attempts to spin Iran's elections in a negative light and the disproportionate influence and control of the American news media by the Israeli lobby in the US. What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: In monitoring some of the media, they led in their coverage of Iran's election by saying 'not fair or free' and then they continued with their story; however, some of these same entities not that long ago were extremely encouraging with so-called elections i.e. one-man elections in Yemen, which we know was absolutely no election at all. Why the difference, what exactly is going on?

Dankof: I think you can pretty much tell the difference in terms of what it is that Israel wants and what the Western multinational corporations want.

A primary example of this - Ron Kampeas had an article recently in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which is reproduced by the Jerusalem Post talking about the fact that this pro-Israel element in the US was behind the effort to get the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MKO) or the People's Holy Warriors de-listed by the American State Department as a terrorist organization.

And when we continue to read this article we discover that there is a group called the Global Initiative for Democracy that sponsored this gathering, which are major Israeli lobby figures in the American government and these American governmental figures have clear links to Israel and to Netanyahu's war lobby.

This not an accident and I think it's a microcosm of the larger problem that we come to when we start looking at all of the influence that Israel has in the Western media and the number of these global institutes-for-democracy of various kinds operating under various guises including the National Endowment for Democracy that are little more than conduits for Israel and the Western multi-nationals to try and co-opt the local political scene wherever it takes place around the globe manipulated in a direction that is serving the usual political purposes.

Press TV: As an American here in Iran I have to say one thing I have found interesting in looking at the Iranian people is a sophistication of the electorate and how informed they are. Even children, you are able to enliven discussions about elections; kids have an opinion about what is going on politically.

We touched a little bit earlier on the low turnout in elections in the US - What do you attribute this to? Why the difference - why is there such a low turnout, not only a low turnout in the US, but it almost seems a case of political apathy?

More:
‘Israel in full control of Western media’

Andrew Bolt Monday, March 05, 2012 at 12:15am

Niche modeller Dr David Stockwell wonders if the media inquiry understands the blog sites it wants the Federal Government to police:

The Media Inquiry by Finkelstein Q.C. proposed on page 301 the regulation of blogs with more than a specific number of hits per annum, suggesting an equivalency with print media:

Does he know how many actual readers that 15,000 hits a year represents?

Of the total number of hits a blog receives, at least 90% are due to search bots (like Google and Bing), spammers and sundry malicious automata.

Of the remaining 10% of hits that could be identified with real people, around 75% are bouncers, people who click away within a few seconds.

Of the real readers, they might browse a few pages, contributing 3 or 4 hits.

Therefore, the ration of hits to readers is around 0.1*0.25*0.25 or less than 1%.

Conservatively, 15000 hits per annum translates into 150 unique readers once a year, or less than one reader per day.

Yet Finkelstein seems to suggest that 15000 hits per annum is equivalent to a publication with a print run of 3000 copies.

Read more here:
Media inquiry wants to control even blogs with a reader a day

Pyongyang, March 2 (KCNA) -- The KBS Media Persons' Association of south Korea on March 2 entered into an indefinite boycott of program production in protest against the puppet authorities' moves to put media under their control, CBS of south Korea reported.

It deplored that fair reporting has been put into a serious crisis since Lee Myung Bak appointed conservative Kim In Gyu as chairman of the KBS.

The organization made it clear that it launched an action demanding a stop to the unfair reporting aimed at misleading public opinion and the resignation of the chairman.

The KBS Trade Union is also going to launch an overall general strike on March 6.

Unionists of the media organizations of south Korea are persisting in their actions against the desperate moves of the puppet regime to put media under its control and its suppression of media.

Actions of reporters and anchor persons belonging to the Reporters Association and the Video Cameramen's Association of the MBC to totally boycott program production and the MBC Trade Union's general strike demanding the resignation of Kim Jae Chol, the wicked chairman of the MBC, are going on. They are positively joined by trade unions of various media organizations.

South Korean progressive media persons are intensifying their actions day by day, saying that they can no longer tolerate the moves of the Lee Myung Bak group of traitors to put the broadcasting service under its control and allow the government to supervise its activities in a bid to stay in power.

More:
KBS Enters into Indefinite Boycott of Program Production

During the post-Soviet era, the port city has acquired a reputation throughout Russia as a bastion of the underground economy. Darkin himself laid the foundation for his rise to power with a company that officials at the Interior Ministry in Moscow characterized as a "hornets' nest of organized crime." At the time, his current wife was married to Igor "The Carp" Karpov, an underworld figure well known in the city. When snipers shot and killed "The Carp" in broad daylight, Belobrova agreed to marry the governor.

"What is happening in the Russian Far East is, in a grotesque way, characteristic of all of Russia," says Vitaly Nomokonov, a law professor at the University of Vladivostok and the author of a textbook on organized crime in the Far East. "The most criminal area of all here is big business, which really ought to be clean, given its close ties to politics."

For this reason, says Nomokonov, there is absolutely no doubt that the top brass in Moscow know perfectly well what is going on in Vladivostok, though they continue to support Darkin. Because of his past, he is susceptible to blackmail and is easily manipulated. He guarantees the "otkat," or commission for high-ranking officials.

During the Putin era, the total amount of bribes being paid in Russia has increased from $33 billion to $400 billion. "Even President Medvedev has admitted there has been no progress," says Professor Nomokonov. "Why is this the case? Because the people in power lack the political will."

Setting The Stage

Even if a vice-governor or a customs director is occasionally arrested on corruption charges, the pickings are still abundant for gold-diggers in Vladivostok. The APEC summit of Asia-Pacific nations will be held in September 2012 on Russky Island, off the coast of Vladivostok. For this reason alone, 15 billion will have been spent on bridges, new construction and infrastructure by then.

When Governor Darkin looks down from his office in Vladivostok's "White House," he doesn't just see a city that is cleaning itself up for the big event in the best of Potemkin traditions with a few improved streets along the route to the airport, or fresh paint on buildings that line the streets.

He also sees heavily loaded ferries breaking through the ice near the half-finished bridge across the Zolotoy Rog Bay. On the island across the bay, which barely had enough drinking water for its residents until recently, some 15,000 construction workers from around the world are working furiously to complete the set for the summit, which is intended to win the respect of U.S. President Barack Obama, Chinese President Hu Jintao and other world leaders.

A project that is deeply Russian in its mixture of energy and pomposity is taking shape on the island. While the champagne glasses for the Obamas are already standing on the dining table in the presidential suite, only a few kilometers away Gennady Paskotin, a retired army officer, is complaining about what was sold to him as a "townhouse." He was forced to leave his former apartment due to the construction. Now he is checking the new 57-square-meter (613-square-foot) dwelling, with its plasterboard interior walls, for crooked alignment. The developer billed the government 150,000 for this drafty alternative housing. "A joke," says Paskotin, who makes ends meet on a small officer's pension.

"Our entire system is so unbelievably corrupt," says an official with United Russia in Vladivostok, "that the only way to save it would be to shoot officials, as they do in China."

Originally posted here:
Shadow Economy And Media Control - Russian's Fed Up With Putin's Manipulations