"Not like you and me" - ROMA expulsions in Europe

Riccardo De Corato, of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's ruling party, Milano's vice mayor and in charge of the Roma camps notes: "These are dark-skinned people, not Europeans like you and me. Our final goal is to have zero Gypsy camps in Milan."

The Washington Post notes, "Few nations, though, have gone as far as Italy, where the number of immigrants has more than doubled over the past decade, to more than 5 million."

France is taking moves to expel Roma as well, and the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights has expressed concern about this move.

I'm interested in how Europe is mishandling the "Roma problem": and why the solutions they're coming up with are so racist, xenophobic and utterly tragic, much less blatant human rights violations.

yes you can, yes you should

In a recent NY TIMES article about the elitism that defines most French Grand Ecoles, the head of the business school ESSEC and chairman of the Conférence des Grandes Écoles, which represents 222 schools, Pierre Tapie, said: "We cannot be the scapegoat of any demagogic decision because we are the finest and most famous part of the whole system."

Um. Yes you can and yes you should.

Fewer minorities accepted at law schools

The number of black and Mexican-American students applying to law school has been relatively constant, or growing slightly, for two decades. But from 2003 to 2008, 61 percent of black applicants and 46 percent of Mexican-American applicants were denied acceptance at all of the law schools to which they applied, compared with 34 percent of white applicants.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/education/07law.html?hpw

Ivy education @ State Prison

Today's Read:

What are your thoughts?

Boy refuses to pledge allegiance until there is truly "liberty and justice for all"

“I was analyzing the meanings of it, because I want to be a lawyer.”

Watch the video at: http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2009/11/16/am.boy.no.pledge.cnn.html

حق داریم

حق داریم

one of my favorite frames from the Farsi version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Watch the vid here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85EaZIjen68

Round up, round up

• Horrific: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bessie16-2009oct16,0,7618199.story?page=1
• Yummy: http://blog.quikchange.net/food-flags-3
• Incredible: (because the baby survived) http://gawker.com/5383040/forget-balloon-boy-todays-all-about-train-baby
• Lame: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/10/16/colorado.balloon.boy/index.html#cnnSTCText

eye tooth?!

A 60-year-old woman blind for nine years has regained useful vision following a rare operation in Miami in which surgeons removed one of her teeth, drilled a hole in it, inserted a plastic lens into the hole and implanted the tooth-lens combination into her eye. It’s the first such operation in the United States, they said.

McDowell's rules!

Today I read that the Federal Court in Malaysia ruled that McDonald's cannot have a monopoly on the prefix "Mc". This sets a precedent for other restaurants to use the "Mc" prefix, as long as they "distinguish their food from McDonald's.

Did anyone else immediately think of "Coming to America", and the infamous "McDowell's" where Eddie Murphy worked?

Read more about the suit at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/08/mcdonalds-loses-trademark_n_279089.html

It all comes out

Tom Ridge, the former Homeland Security chief, announces in his recent book, The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege ... And How We Can Be Safe Again, that he was pressured to raise the "terror alert" before the U.S. Presidential election in 2004. The pressure ultimately helped him decide to leave to the private sector. Read more here.

Depeche Live at Madison Square Garden

Searching for a book

کسی‌ "زنان بدون مردم" (اون کتاب شهرنوش پرسیپور) دارد؟

All I ever wanted, all I ever needed

is here, in my arms.

Tomorrow, DM at MSG.

memories from their last show:

Thriller - as part of rehabilitation

Read more about this here.

عسگری

عسگری (Asgari), who worked oversaw security in the IT network of Iran's interior ministry was rumored to be killed in a suspicious car accident two days after he revealed in a memo that the Iranian election was rigged (Guardian.co.uk).

His secret letter has been leaked around the country, and is available on the internet.

Some say he designed the election software, some say that he simply leaked evidence about the rigging of the election.

More later....