5/18/2017 4 Comments Turkish embassy attackJust the other day the Turkish prime minister had made a visit to the U.S. During the visit there were some peaceful protests going on near the Turkish embassy. While the protesters were protesting, the many security guards had attacked and beaten many of the protesters in a decently large fight that caused many of the police nearby to have to intervene and split up the fight.
I'm not a big fan of expelling ambassadors in general, but ambassadors have been expelled for less serious breaches of diplomacy, if the assailants are proven to be embassy staff. The 1961 Vienna Treaty on Diplomatic Relations, which codifies concepts such as diplomatic immunity and the inviolability of embassies Article 9 states; "The receiving state may at any time and without having to explain its decision, notify the sending state that the head of the mission or any member of the diplomatic staff of the mission is persona non grata or that any other member of the staff of the mission is not acceptable. In any such case, the sending state shall, as appropriate, either recall the person concerned or terminate his functions with the mission." as with almost everything else in government these days, there will huffing and puffing, there will be grandstanding, there will be "outrage", there will be "determined" politicians demanding and declaring that something will be done. This will drag on for a short while...and then the "investigation" will be dragged out indefinitely, to the point that no one can even give a shit anymore, because a new fucked up thing will have happened to take our minds off of this. There was even a very well made video of the entire thing that was caught on camera. Watching it this is really shocking to watch. Clearly there was a group of men, mostly in suits, who were viciously going after certain protesters. This one man who was holding a bullhorn was absolutely rocked with front kicks to his face from several mean in suits. That type of hit could easily cause brain damage or serious neck injury. If this was in fact orchestrated or sanctioned by anyone associated with the Turkish Embassy, it's a gross breach of trust and diplomacy. SOURCE
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5/7/2017 15 Comments shanghai visasSo in a very interesting turn of events and agreement, Shanghai has invited China to buy real estate from Donald Trump's son-in-law in exchange for visas. They also barred any media from attending the event, for some reason. I think that this is a very odd event to happen, but that could also be due to the fact that I don't know much about politics in general. But I do find things odd that their governing power had profited over something such as visas. In fact, the Chinese government who are buying the land from Shanghai stated that they were only interested in buying because they were buying from a trump-son with their company. Here is a quote with some context from the article "SHANGHAI Organizers barred journalists on Sunday from a publicly advertised event in Shanghai to attract Chinese investment in a U.S. real estate project linked to the family of President Donald Trump's son-in-law in exchange for immigrant visas. Jared Kushner, whose White House portfolio includes relations with China, sold his stake in Kushner Companies to a family trust early this year. POPULAR WITH WEALTHY CHINESE. One potential investor, Sophie Xing, said a "Very important" factor in her decision to attend Sunday's event was the fact that the project was a Kushner Companies investment and that Trump's son-in-law's sister would be showing up in Shanghai." SOURCE 4/28/2017 4 Comments Seoul missile defenseSo in retaliation for some of the things happening recently in North Korea, South Korea and the U.S. have agreed to put in a missile defense system just in case anything gets shot at Seoul. One of the portions of the agreement was that the U.S. would provide the funding for the weapons, if North Korea would provide the land to build upon. Now though, president Trump wants North Korea to pay for it all, and of course North Korea does not like that idea.
Trump sure seems to be hanging on to the idea that he can convince other countries to pay for things he wants by blustering about it. the South Korean government is already taking flak from the local population of Seongju who don't like it being installed there. China was hugely upset that Korea installed the THAAD, and a lot of Chinese boycotted Korean goods. As a result, the Korean economy took a hit (Lotte alone closed 85 of 99 stores in China). Furthermore, there was a group in Korea that didn't want to install it because they didn't want to be so chummy with the US. It was a political and economic risk for Korea to side with the Americans. Seoul retorted that under the Status of Forces Agreement that governs the US military presence in the country, the South would provide the THAAD site and infrastructure while the US would pay to deploy and operate it. SOURCE 4/22/2017 5 Comments North korea 2017Every year there seems to be without delay some sort of threat from the North Korean Kim regime. It usually lands somewhere near the time they celebrate the Day of the Sun, or the birthday of their dictator Kim. This threat most usually entails some sort of missile threat, demonstration or nuclear weapons test that they use to show their own people their imminent power and to get more resources from their allies China.
Though, in the not so recent times China has stopped supporting North Korea, in fact it has completely stopped buying coal from North Korea, which is North Korea's main export. It has also meet and spoke with the U.S. regarding the matters of what to do with the now unwanted state. China should be concerned. If North Korea launches even a single nuke in the general direction of the US we can all safely assume the US response will be to obliterate North Korea. China doesn't want that kind of action so close to its borders. Although, I feel China is more worried of an imminent refugee crisis if something were to happen. A conflict between the US and North Korea would end pretty quickly, but China would get the brunt of the fleeing refugees. In all actuality, there are two types of Chinese, those who feel like yeah, its time we should probably do something about North Korea, and another more idealistic type who thinks NK is the last holdout against capitalism and China should do everything to help North Korea against US. This brings up another large and hidden point. Who is to take on the refugees from North Korea? If the South Koreans were to unite and take them all in, then in the eyes of China, the U.S. has won. Yet on the other side of the spectrum, if China takes the refugees, then China has won and the possibility of uniting both Koreas is lost. So along with the genetic testing that companies want to do to their employees, they are most likely going to get away with blending it with their wellness programs.
If you already did not know, many larger corporations offer wellness programs to help with lowering insurance costs by teaching and allowing their employees to live healthier lives. But are these programs really there to help the employee, or are they there more so for the employer who benefits the most from not having to pay for the now healthier employees healthcare costs. I think that they are doing this for the companies own personal gain solely, and with no care for the employees. Well, now they are taking it to a whole new level by attempting to gene test their potential employees before they even become employees. This serves two fold, first, since they now have a generally healthier employee population, they have a smaller chance of paying high insurance costs due to unhealthy employees. Secondly, they get to say to everyone that their company has a healthier population, and possibly even credit their in house wellness programs. A win-win for the company, and a win-lose for those trying to work for them. Additionally, this can be used as a sneaky way to screen unwanted employees who the company may not want to hire. For example, if employee A and employee B are applying for company X, then if company X can get employee B working for less money, then they might say that employee A's genetic test does not fit the companies health motto well enough. I personally hope that employers don't get the power to access any employees genetic or health data, and that health screenings do not become the norm for companies in the future. SOURCE 4/7/2017 2 Comments Gene testing passesAs many may know, there has been a lot of controversy going on in congress with the bill for repealing and replacing the afordable care act, and replacing it with the republican administration's AHCA, or also known as the afordable health care act. None the less, there was also another, possibly even more important bill that passed, HR1313. This bill goes around the 2008 bill for genetic privacy and nondiscrimination law known as GINA. This bill gets around that by adding it as part of the companies wellness programs, that allow them to require employees to give in to mandatory genetic testing, and to release other health related information.
Now, this is not all done without fair reason. Benefits for the company also tend to overflow into the overall general health of the workforce. That means that due to the initial screening from the employer, they technically are able to keep a more healthy workforce by simply not hiring or charging an excess for those employees who carry a less healthy life. I personally feel that this is extremely discriminating, and since gene testing is not entirely accurate, they may be missing and getting a lot of false positives during the testing. Furthermore, it has been shown that genetic screening does not in fact improve the overall health of benefit the employees at all SOURCE. So for me, this entire bill seems like very much a money grab for the business side of things. SOURCE 3/31/2017 2 Comments Net neutrality againSo as a computer science student, things like net neutrality and internet privacy come up very often, and are often debated between peers. In fact, just a few years ago, a friend of mine wrote a paper on net neutrality. Well congress recently passed a piece of legislation that would undo the Obama regulations on Internet Service Providers that prevent them from selling user's internet browsing data.
For a lot of people, this is pretty scary. Knowing that anyone can legally buy your browsing data usually comes at a shock. There is some good to it though, whoever buys it will only be able to see the domains that you visit, not necessarily what you do on them. This is is contrast to people who think their entire browser history will be up for grabs by anyone. Secondly, it will most likely be treated like debt collectors buying debt from banks. Buyers will most likely not be able to buy data by user's identity, but rather they will probably have to buy data in large chunks, not knowing who's data they got. Furthermore, companies such as Google and Facebook are not under these FCC rules to not sell your data, and use it as their business model. So it does in fact suck that our data is now able to be sold by our internet service providers such as AT&T and Verizon, but we have to remember that it has been going on all along. I personally think that our internet providers should not be allowed to sell our data, since they make enough money with their expensive rates, but at least it is not as bad as it seems. SOURCE 3/24/2017 1 Comment More than circumstantial evidenceSo recently there has been a lot of controversy regarding the Trump administration and their supposed contacts with Russia during the campaign in order to help sway the votes in their favor. Many people, mostly on the democratic side of things have been calling for an independent investigation, one that is not run by the GOP themselves. Although in new light, and in recent times the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigations have held recent hearings that allude to them having substantial evidence regarding the collusions with Russians during the campaign cycle.In fact, Adam Schiff, member of the House Intelligence Committee has spoken out and said that there is 'substantial evidence' regarding the Trump administration and their contacts with Russia during the campaign. He refuses to go into more detail regarding what he means by substantial evidence other than saying that it is more than circumstantial.
I think that this is both exciting and terrifying when it comes to U.S. politics. I am proud that the intelligence agencies are doing their jobs as a separate entity of the main White House, but I am also saddened by the fact that this kind of investigation is underway in the first place. If anything does come of this investigation, then things will surely go sour for the current administration, and we would be given Mike Pence as our new President. But on the other hand, why would we give the seat of the Presidency to the Vice President if he was also brought into the White House under the same false pretenses that the President was? Should the entire administration be taken out and we have a re vote? Again, if nothing comes of this investigation, then I bet that we would never hear the end of it from President Trump, he would be on Twitter the day of calling out the CIA or the FBI fake news. So I recently read an article on a popular forum online regarding a new bill that was proposed to the House and Legislature in North Carolina. Now, usually I would not be interested in some bill that was only just proposed, but this bill would require that employees submit a genetic test form as part of their application process for the companies health plans. In the article, they even make mention to the film Gattaca, where genetic discrimination is the norm, and people need to also submit gene tests to their employers, albeit for more than just the ability to use the companies health plan. Proponents of this bill say that it is easier to keep a healthy workforce, rather than pay excessive amounts for a constantly unhealthy workforce. Thus, they want to know of any genetic issues that an employee may have, and offer health incentives such as monetary bonus, or paying for the cost of gym memberships for those who maintain a healthy lifestyle. While this may seem like a step in the right direction regarding the health of their employees, those who are genetically prone to being ill or contracting a certain disease just due to their genes would only be offered a higher premium for their healthcare that is given by their employer, or else find a separate health insurance provider on their own.
I for one think that this is a horrible idea. It not only forces all employees to submit a gene test, giving away much more personal information than what most people feel comfortable giving, but it also literally discriminates against those who have conditions that they have no control over. These gene tests are also not 100% proven, and only give their best estimate. For most things that are tested for, the results only return a percentage of how likely it is for that person to contract or develop that specific disease. How will employers determine the threshold? If an employee just so happens to be just 1% above the threshold they are forced into these company regulations, while another employee may fall just 1% below and face no repercussions at all. Yet employee 1 is only 2% more likely to contract some illness than employee 2. A better way to handle this, in my opinion, would be to not allow any sort of mandatory gene testing to occur by the employee, but possibly the employee can volunteer some sort of regular physical in order to get discounts on their medical insurance. Such that it encourages employees to maintain a healthy lifestyle and save some money, while those who do not wish to maintain a healthy lifestyle don't lose, or gain anything other than what they would have already had to pay. ARTICLE 3/11/2017 1 Comment Social Stigmas Behind Gene Testing As mentioned in my previous blog post, gene testing has its many uses and also can lead to many different social stigmas and some outlash from certain civil rights activists and groups.
There will always be a social ethical stigma when dealing with genetic testing for the workforce. In fact, employers get a good amount of flack for pretesting their applicants and filtering out those who do not pass. Employers argue that through genetic testing they can maintain a much healthier and productive workforce. For occupations that do not genetically screen their employees an estimated 390,000 workers contract disabling occupational diseases each year, and one study done by the Bureau of labor statistics reports that over 850,000 total workdays were lost due to illnesses associated with the work site. Some people also feel a false, yet real sense of ethnic segregation when it comes to genetic testing. This is not in the sense that employers are purposefully screening for specific races, but rather that certain races and ethnicities tend to carry certain genetic defects that others do not. For example, a commonly screened for genetic disorder, sickle cell trait, is found in roughly 1 out of every 12 blacks, yet only found in 1 out of every 1000 whites. This can lead to certain minorities speaking out about feeling segregated against in these employment opportunities. Others also argue that employers could be over exaggerating the risks of the workplace, as the tests are not full proof, and the connections between the hazardous work environment and these genetic traits are still not 100% verified and well known. |
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