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ck4829

ck4829's Journal
ck4829's Journal
May 23, 2012

Creepy underreported story out of UK - 1000's kept unemployed because of blacklist

AS many as 5000 construction workers in Scotland are feared to be on employers’ blacklists because they might call for better working conditions.

The Scottish Trade Union Congress are probing the extent of the practice, where workers are kept out of jobs because they are classed as “troublemakers”.

Many of those targeted are simply members of a trades union or a political party. The STUC’s Ian Tasker said: “If we look at the construction sector alone, it is a fair estimate that there may be 4000 to 5000 workers on blacklists.

The extent of blacklisting in Scotland has not been investigated before. But a group of 100 workers in England are about to embark on a class action against 39 companies who funded a blacklist.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2012/05/22/5000-scottish-troublemakers-placed-on-building-firms-blacklists-unions-claim-86908-23868628/

Definitely something to watch.

May 7, 2012

Pseudoscience through the ages

3000 years ago...

"OK, everything else looks good, let me just cut open this chicken and read it's guts... According to the guts you are... OH MY GOD, YOU ARE GOING TO ROB ME BLIND AND STAB ME AFTER THE INTERVIEW IS OVER!"

19th Century...

"OK, everything else looks good, let me just feel the bumps on your head... According to the bumps on your head you are... OH MY GOD, YOU ARE GOING TO ROB ME BLIND AND STAB ME AFTER THE INTERVIEW IS OVER!"

Early 20th Century...

"OK, everything else looks good, let me just get your eugenics pedigree... According to the pedigree... OH MY GOD, YOU ARE GOING TO ROB ME BLIND AND STAB ME AFTER THE INTERVIEW IS OVER!"

Today...

"OK, everything else looks good, let me just get your credit report... According to the credit report... OH MY GOD, YOU ARE GOING TO ROB ME BLIND AND STAB ME AFTER THE INTERVIEW IS OVER!"

The formula may be secret, they may be a deciding factor in what job you can get or where you can live, but they are certainly not new.

May 7, 2012

Bryan Fischer of the AFA: Hey, I'm just saying things the right thinks but won't talk about

Rosie Gray of BuzzFeed is out with a new profile of Bryan Fischer, the American Family Association spokesman, revealing that Fischer is a wildcard in the Religious Right movement not because of his extremist views but as a result of his readiness to broadcast them without restraint or fear of the consequences. Social conservative leaders never question or rebuke his hardline rhetoric or radical claims, chronicled almost daily on this blog, and are happy to give Fischer a platform at key events like the Values Voters Summit and appear on his radio show. As Gray writes, the leadership of the AFA is squarely behind Fischer, with Buster Wilson boasting that Fischer “will say things that a lot of people on the conservative side of things think but they won’t say.”

Sarah Posner of Religion Dispatches noted in her report from October, 2010, that former AFA employees told her that “the views represented by Fischer are not only tolerated within the organization, but any opposition to its anti-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant invective—including reliance on white nativist sources in the AFA’s media programs—is dismissed. What’s worse, former employees say, anyone questioning such attitudes as un-Christian is denigrated, and in some cases forced out.”

In fact, the only times his columns were censored by the AFA was not due to internal disagreement but because the issues he was talking about veered outside of the group’s mission.

While the AFA did not remove Fischer’s column denying the link between HIV and AIDS from its website (which you can find here), the group expunged Fischer’s columns defending the expulsion of Native Americans from their land, demanding all immigrants to the US convert to Christianity and maintaining that African Americans “rut like rabbits” as a result of the welfare system. Again, the AFA didn’t think Fischer was wrong, but as Tim Wildmon said, they were about “topics that we wouldn’t get into.”

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/afa-stands-by-their-man

We should consider Fischer the hidden barometer on what the right wing really thinks about the issues and their fellow Americans as long as he being accepted like this by the right.

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