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Monday, May 6, 2013

Collector keeps his 29 boa constrictors _ for now

Thomas Cobb lets his young son Daiden hold one of his snakes as he shows off several of his exotic reptile that he keeps in a special basement room of his home, Friday, April 26, 2013 in Cottonwood Heights, Utah. Cobb has been ordered by police to get rid of all but one of his 29 exotic boa constrictor snakes because he doesn?t have an exotic pet permit. (AP Photo/The Deseret News, Scott G. Winterton) SALT LAKE TRIBUNE OUT; MAGS OUT

Caiden Cobb admires one of his father's snakes, Friday, April 26, 2013 in Cottonwood Heights, Utah. Thomas Cobb has been ordered by police to get rid of all but one of his 29 exotic boa constrictor snakes because he doesn?t have an exotic pet permit. (AP Photo/The Deseret News, Scott G. Winterton) SALT LAKE TRIBUNE OUT; MAGS OUT

Thomas Cobb shows off several of his exotic reptiles that he keeps in a special basement room of his home Friday, April 26, 2013 in Cottonwood Heights, Utah. Cobb has been ordered by police to get rid of all but one of his 29 exotic boa constrictor snakes because he doesn?t have an exotic pet permit. (AP Photo/The Deseret News, Scott G. Winterton) SALT LAKE TRIBUNE OUT; MAGS OUT

Thomas Cobb shows off several of his exotic reptiles that he keeps in a special basement room of his home, Friday, April 26, 2013 in Cottonwood Heights, Utah. Cobb has been ordered by police to get rid of all but one of his 29 exotic boa constrictor snakes because he doesn?t have an exotic pet permit. (AP Photo/The Deseret News, Scott G. Winterton) SALT LAKE TRIBUNE OUT; MAGS OUT

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) ? A Utah snake collector who says his rare boa constrictors are getting a bad rap has won at least a temporary reprieve from an order to remove more than two dozen of the exotic pets from his home.

Cottonwood Heights police cited Thomas Cobb a week ago for failure to have an exotic pet permit and told him he had until Friday to get rid of all but one of his 29 boa constrictors.

Cobb values the snakes at $12,000 apiece and said he spent $100,000 on a special room in his basement with top-of-the-line cages. Some of the snakes are as long as 7 feet. Police officers noted in their report the setup was clean and well-kept.

City council members agreed on Friday to look into the case further after Cobb argued that a local ordinance is confusing.

Cobb got the attention of the council and the mayor after he took his fight against the snake eviction to the Internet and local radio shows. He maintains he's the victim, in part, of the public's distaste for snakes in general.

"We see movies, we see 'Snakes on a Plane,' we see 'Anaconda,' we see these movies where snakes are portrayed as monsters and can eat school buses, and that is not the case," he told The Deseret News (http://tinyurl.com/cajkcvn).

Cobb praised the council for having an open mind.

"I am pleased to find that they are at least willing to take and investigate further rather than make assumptions and going off on maybe their personal belief on snakes and maybe the reptile hobby keeping in general," he said.

Cottonwood Heights police Sgt. Dan Bartlett said a neighbor spotted one of the snakes and called police to Cobb's home last week. He said officers also found 80 rats, which were being kept as food for the snakes.

Cobb was cited for failing to have the permit required when anyone owns more than one exotic pet. He disputes that interpretation and maintains he needs to show only that he can properly care for the snakes, that they do not pose a danger to the public and that he has knowledge of the animals.

Cobb is scheduled to meet again with the council on May 7. He said he has invited all of the council members to his house to see the snakes firsthand, but as of Friday no one had taken him up on the offer.

___

Information from: Deseret News, http://www.deseretnews.com

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/aa9398e6757a46fa93ed5dea7bd3729e/Article_2013-05-04-Exotic%20Snake%20Collector-Reprieve/id-201d59ce4ddd4bc18cf9a447a0182668

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Sunday, May 5, 2013

Oppo Find 5 (Unlocked)

Oppo? The Blu-ray player company? Making a smartphone? Those are the thoughts that went through my mind when I first heard about the Oppo Find 5. In the United States, Oppo is really only known by home theater enthusiasts for its top-of-the-line Blu-ray players. But the company has a much more diverse portfolio overseas, as evidenced by its new flagship smartphone, which is now available unlocked in the U.S. The Find 5 ($499 16GB/$569 32GB) has a sleek, high-quality build, a good size when you consider its big 5-inch display, and a sharp 13-megapixel camera. But it's heavy, there's no LTE support, and the video camera isn't great. Still, the Find 5 is worth a look if you don't like to carry the same phone as everyone else, and it proves that Oppo's expertise isn't limited to home theater gear.

Size, Design, and Call Quality
Like the recent Sony Xperia ZL, perhaps the best thing about the Find 5 is its size. With a screen this big, it's easy to continue building out around it until you have a phone that's impossible to use with just one hand. But Oppo makes it feel manageable by pushing that screen almost all the way to either side of the phone, so that there's just 3.25mm of space, with a reasonable amount of bezel on the top and bottom. At 5.58 by 2.71 by 0.35 inches (HWD), it's actually slightly less wide and deep than the Xperia ZL, though it's a fifth of an inch longer. And while you can't always use this phone with just one hand, it feels more manageable than many other big devices. But at 5.82 ounces it's also quite heavy.

As far as design goes, the Find 5 is yet another generic slab, albeit an exceptionally handsome one. I like the minimalist design language; the phone looks like a long rectangle with subtle curves at the top and bottom. Available in either black or white, the back and sides of the phone are made of remarkably sturdy matte plastic, which also peeks out at the lip of the otherwise all-glass display. There's a power port on the bottom, a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top, and clear plastic buttons on either side that look like glass. If you want a sleek, relatively obscure phone to make your geeky friends jealous, this is it.

I've got no complaints about the 5-inch, 1080p IPS LCD, which looks absolutely gorgeous. With 441 pixels per inch, this is one of the densest screens available, so text, images, and video all look remarkably clear. Typing on the onscreen keyboard feels comfortable, which you might expect given all that screen real estate.

The unibody design makes for less modifiability than, say, the Samsung Galaxy S 4. There's no microSD card slot and the 2,500mAh battery isn't removable. Oppo includes a tool that lets you access the SIM card slot on the left side of the phone.?

The Find 5 is unlocked, so you can use it on either AT&T or T-Mobile's network, or with smaller GSM-based carriers like Simple Mobile (which uses T-Mobile's network). It supports up to HSPA+ 42 on the 850/900/1700/1800/1900/2100MHz bands. You can also hit 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands.?For this review I tested the phone on AT&T, though it would make an especially good fit for T-Mobile, given the carrier's excellent HSPA+ 42 network and its new contract-free pricing. There's no LTE support here.

Reception and call quality were both good on AT&T's network. Voices sounded clear, but a little thin and thready in the phone's earpiece. Calls made with the phone were loud, natural, and clear, though background noise cancellation capabilities were just average in my tests. The speakerphone sounds good but is not loud enough to hear outdoors. I paired the phone with a Jawbone Era?Bluetooth headset and was able to make hands-free calls using Google Voice Dialer.

I got 11 hours and 13 minutes of talk time over AT&T's network, which is a solid number, though I saw the battery decrease much more quickly while I was running benchmark tests with the screen brightness set to high.

The phone is available in either 16 or 32GB options. I reviewed the 32GB model, which has 25.09GB of free internal storage. I'm bummed by the lack of a microSD card slot, though 25GB should be a decent amount of storage for most people.

Android and Apps
The Find 5 is powered by a 1.5GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 processor, which is one of the fastest chips you can get right now. Combine that with an Adreno 320 GPU and you've got an unstoppable multimedia machine. Benchmark scores were slightly lower than the Xperia ZL, which is likely due to Sony's slightly less aggressive Android overlay. Still, the difference is negligible; the Find 5 should be able to handle anything you can throw at it.

The phone runs Android 4.1.1 (Jelly Bean). That's not the latest version of Android available, but for now, it's close enough. Oppo has tinkered with Google's open source OS to mixed results.

Let's get the bad part out of the way. I'm not sure what Oppo's designers were thinking when creating new widgets, as the freeform shapes you get here are large, obtrusive, and not attractive. I also don't care for the app styling, which places a border around every app icon that doesn't belong to Google. Additionally, the built-in app designs (particularly for the Phone, Messages, Clock, Camera, and Calendar apps) are a little too close to Apple's iOS design for comfort.

(Next page: Camera, Multimedia, and Conclusions)

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/pj8dowVwVsc/0,2817,2418517,00.asp

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Saturday, May 4, 2013

Suicide Among Baby Boomers Up Sharply - Know These Warning ...

Suicide rates among middle-aged Americans have risen sharply in the U.S. during the past decade, prompting concern that the recession and slowly recovering economy in recent years is negatively impacting baby boomers who may be stressed to the point of inflicting harm to themselves.

According to the CDC in its May 3, 2013 issue of its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, more people now die of suicide than they do in car accidents, which killed 33,687 Americans in 2012, compared to 38,364 who died from suicide.

The increase in middle-age suicide represents as shift away from a problem that has more often been associated with teens and seniors.

Indeed, the suicide rate for Americans between the ages of 35 and 64 increased by almost 30 percent during the years from 1999 to 2010. Specifically, the suicide rate for those in middle age jumped from 13.7 deaths per 100,000 people in 1999 to 17.6 deaths per 100,000 people in 2010.

For both men and women who are middle-aged, suicide rates continue to rise. However, significantly more men commit suicide than women, with the rate for men at 27.3 deaths per 100,000, compared to women at 8.1 deaths per 100,000.

The biggest increase in suicide was for men in their 50s, with 30 out of 100,000 in that age group killing themselves, up 50 percent. The biggest increase in women was seen in those between the ages of 60 and 64, with 7 out of 100,000 committing suicide for a rate increase of nearly 60 percent.

According to some experts, these new numbers for suicide rates are actually on the low side.

?It?s vastly underreported,? said Julie Phillips, an associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University who has also conducted research on rising suicide rates. ?We know we?re not counting all suicides.?

Although researchers admit that no one can know for sure why these suicide rates have increased, the CDC says there are a number of possible explanations.

?It is the baby boomer group where we see the highest rates of suicide,? said CDC deputy director, Ileana Arias. ?There may be something about that group, and how they think about life issues and their life choices that may make a difference.?

The suicide rate increase may also be due to the recession and slow recovery of the economy over the past decade. Historically, the rate of suicide typically increases during economically difficult times.

?The increase does coincide with a decrease in financial standing for a lot of families over the same time period,? Dr. Arias said.

The recent jump in suicides has also been attributed to the widespread availability of prescription narcotics, such as oxycodone, which can cause death if taken in large doses.

For most people who commit suicide, however, self-inflicted gunshots from firearms remains the weapon of choice. Suicide by poisoning is also on the rise, as are intentional overdoses of prescription drugs and hangings ? with poisoning deaths up 24 percent in the last decade and hangings up 81 percent during that same time period.

For baby boomers ? sometimes referred to as the ?Sandwich Generation? ? hitting middle age can be a time of increased stress due to caring for older children and aging parents at the same time. As Dr. Arias points out, suicide rates among this generation may be higher because they have life challenges and financial circumstances that are unique to them.

?Their lives are configured a little differently than it has been in the past for that age group,? Dr. Arias said. ?It may not be that they are more sensitive or that they have a predisposition to suicide, but that they may be dealing with more.?

According to Phillips, changes in marriage, social isolation and family roles mean many of the pressures faced by baby boomers will continue in the next generation.

?The boomers had great expectations for what their life might look like, but I think perhaps it hasn?t panned out that way,? said Phillips. ?All these conditions the boomers are facing, future cohorts are going to be facing many of these conditions as well.?

In the meantime, the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) offers the following tips for helping to prevent suicide. Although, most apply primarily to school children and teens, the following may still apply to older adults, particularly as it pertains to knowing the warning signs and then taking action to help someone if you suspect they may be suicidal:

Suicide Warning Signs

1. Suicide notes. These are a very real sign of danger and should be taken seriously.

2. Threats. Threats may be direct statements (?I want to die.? ?I am going to kill myself?) or, unfortunately, indirect comments (?The world would be better without me?, ?Nobody will miss me anyway?). Among teenagers, indirect clues could be offered through joking or through comments in school assignments, particularly creative writing or artwork. Younger children and those who may have some delays in their development may not be able to express their feelings in words, but may provide indirect clues in the form of acting-out, violent behavior, often with threatening or suicidal comments.

3. Previous attempts. If a child or teenager has attempted suicide in the past, there is a greater likelihood that he or she will try again. Be very observant of any friends who have tried suicide before.

4. Depression (helplessness/hopelessness). When symptoms of depression include strong thoughts of helplessness and hopelessness, a child or adolescent is possibly at greater risk for suicide. Watch out for behaviors or comments that indicate that your friend is feeling overwhelmed by sadness or pessimistic views of their future.

5. ?Masked? depression. Sometimes risk-taking behaviors can include acts of aggression, gunplay, and alcohol/substance abuse. While your friend does not acted ?depressed,? their behavior suggests that they are not concerned about their own safety.

6. Final arrangements. This behavior may take many forms. In adolescents, it might be giving away prized possessions such as jewelry, clothing, journals or pictures.

7. Efforts to hurt oneself. Self-injury behaviors are warning signs for young children as well as teenagers. Common self-destructive behaviors include running into traffic, jumping from heights, and scratching/cutting/marking the body.

8. Inability to concentrate or think clearly. Such problems may be reflected in classroom behavior, homework habits, academic performance, household chores, even conversation. If your friend starts skipping classes, getting poor grades, acting up in class, forgetting or poorly performing chores around the house or talking in a way that suggests they are having trouble concentrating, these might be signs of stress and risk for suicide.

9. Changes in physical habits and appearance. Changes include inability to sleep or sleeping all the time, sudden weight gain or loss, disinterest in appearance or hygiene.

10. Sudden changes in personality, friends, behaviors. Parents, teachers and friends are often the best observers of sudden changes in suicidal students. Changes can include withdrawing from friends and family, skipping school or classes, loss of involvement in activities that were once important, and avoiding friends.

11. Death and suicidal themes. These might appear in classroom drawings, work samples, journals or homework.

12. Plan/method/access. A suicidal child or adolescent may show an increased interest in guns and other weapons, may seem to have increased access to guns, pills, etc., and/or may talk about or hint at a suicide plan. The greater the planning, the greater the potential for suicide.

What Can You Do to Help a Friend?

1. Know the warning signs! Read over the list above and keep it in a safe place.

2. Do not be afraid to talk to your friends. Listen to their feelings. Make sure they know how important they are to you, but don?t believe you can keep them from hurting themselves on your own. Preventing suicide will require adult help.

3. Make no deals. Never keep secret a friend's suicidal plans or thoughts. You can not promise that you will not tell?you have to tell to save your friend!

4. Tell an adult. Talk to your parent, your friend's parent, your school?s psychologist or counselor-- a trusted adult. And don?t wait! Don?t be afraid that the adults will not believe you or take you seriously?keep talking until they listen! Even if you are not sure your friend is suicidal, talk to someone. It?s OK if you ?jump the gun??this is definitely the time to be safe and not sorry!

5. Ask if your school has a crisis team. Many schools (elementary, middle and high schools) have organized crisis teams, which include teachers, counselors, social workers, psychologists and principals. These teams help train all staff to recognize warning signs of suicide as well as how to help in a crisis situation. These teams can also help students understand warning signs of violence and suicide. If your school does not have a crisis team, ask your Student Council or faculty advisor to look into starting a team.

SOURCE: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, May 3, 2013 / 62(17);321-325. National Association of School Psychologists (www.nasponline.org)

Source: http://www.emaxhealth.com/11400/suicide-among-baby-boomers-sharply-know-these-warning-signs-help-prevent

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Netflix: Where We Set Up Shop, Torrenting Drops

The Chief Content Officer of streaming giant Netflix claims the modern trend for easily streaming legal content is impacting on the more hardcore Bittorrent scene, with pirate traffic dropping in countries when Netflix switches on its servers.

Friday, May 3, 2013

Nigel Barber: Is Gay Marriage a Civil Right?

The gay marriage debate revolves around two very different notions of what marriage is. The traditionalist view sees marriages as having the primary purpose of raising children. The alternative perspective -- adopted by most gay rights advocates -- views marriage as a relationship between two people with emotional and practical functions distinct from reproduction.

Two theories of marriage

The traditionalist perspective dominated ideas of marriage in all societies studied by anthropologists, and throughout recorded history. Marriage as a reproductive union mostly excluded gays whose lack of interest in heterosexual intercourse excluded them from reproduction and regular marriage.

Of course, many societies recognized homosexual unions having other functions such as military apprenticeships among the Spartans, or domestic cooperation and child care amongst Native Americans where a widower married another (transgender) man, or Two-Spirit having both masculine and feminine traits, who then took care of his children.

Marriage can be viewed as an emotional relationship insulated from any practical function, however. This rationale for marriage was introduced to theology in an improbable way by St. Paul who asserted that it is better to marry than to burn. This unusual nod to personal feelings represents marriage is a containment device for dangerously sinful passions that would otherwise destroy the single. It is one facet of the sexual paranoia of the Bible that finds a parallel in immoderate homophobia.

St. Paul was thinking of heterosexuals, of course. And he probably considered marriage as more of a duty to prevent sinful acts than as an individual right to sexual and emotional fulfillment in marriage. Yet, translated into an era of civil rights, his individualistic rationale for matrimony has crystallized as a universal right of all adults to marry analogous to the right to vote.

In those terms, depriving gays of the right to marry gets equated with denying African Americans the right to vote, or to marry people of other ethnic groups. Once the debate is phrased in those terms, the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Very few young people are opposed to gay marriage so electorates of the future will inevitably extend marriage rights to homosexuals. Even some conservative U.S. politicians have begun to follow the tide of public opinion and now accept gay marriage as a civil right.

Rephrasing gay marriage as a civil rights issue is a brilliant public relations move. Yet, it commits a logical error by categorizing marriage as an individual right, something that it never was previously.

A break with history

In the past, heterosexual marriage was a reproductive union. It protected the interests of children and united the families of the bride and groom to this end. Rather than an emotional bond between two people it was a reproductive contract: the wife could expect her husband to support the children in return for which she guaranteed his paternity.

Redefining marriage as a civil right strips it of its defining feature as a reproductive union. This problem is seldom explicitly acknowledged. Yet, it is expressed indirectly in the semantics of the gay marriage debate.

Religious conservatives do not want to permit gay marriage. Yet, many of them are in favor of "civil unions." In other words, gays have a civil right to join civil unions and obtain equal treatment under the law, from employers, and from the Internal Revenue Service. On the other hand, conservatives do not view such unions as equivalent to marriage because they are unions between individuals as opposed to the traditionalist arrangement for raising children.

This distinction may be logically valid but it cannot hold back gay marriage. As far as young people, are concerned, gay marriage is a non issue. This means that electorates of the future will ratify gay marriage in every state. Young Americans are far less religious than older generations as I pointed out in my book Why Atheism Will Replace Religion and they scoff at the sexual paranoia of Biblical tradition.

Politically, it is very difficult to accept civil unions but reject gay marriage. If you have one, as a practical matter, you have the other. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Finally, the distinction between gay civil unions and (full) heterosexual marriage as a vehicle for raising children assumes that gay people do not produce children. Thanks to advances in reproductive technology, that assumption is no longer valid. So gay marriage may arrive as a civil right but soon morph into something closer to a reproductive union.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nigel-barber/is-gay-marriage-a-civil-r_b_3202695.html

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Physics teacher adopts Google Glass, gives students a glance at CERN (video)

When Google asked what we'd do if we had Glass, it was no doubt hoping we'd produce some world-changing ideas. We now know at least a few exist, courtesy of physics teacher Andrew Vanden Heuvel. He's long been hoping to use the wearable tech for remote teaching and one-on-one sessions, and the Glass Explorer program has given him the chance to do just that. His first stop? None other than CERN. Courtesy of a trip for Google's new Explorer Story video series, Vanden Heuvel is the first person to teach a science course while inside the Large Hadron Collider tunnel, streaming his perspective to students thousands of miles away. While we don't know if other Explorer Stories will be quite as inspiring, we'll admit to being slightly jealous -- where was Glass when we were kids?

[Thanks, Peter]

Filed under: Wearables, Google

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Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Politics undercuts Lebanon?s traditional union

BEIRUT: This year marked a turning point for Lebanon?s labor movement and the General Labor Confederation, the organization that has traditionally been the official collective bargaining representative of the country?s workers.

After being fractured by sectarian schisms and hijacked to serve the interests of Lebanon?s political class for more than three decades, whatever last whiffs of legitimacy the GLC could claim were shattered when the rival Union Coordination Committee mobilized thousands of teachers and public sector workers in a monthlong campaign to force the government to pass a salary scale increase.

Even critics of the deal that the UCC struck with the government credit it with appealing to common professional grievances and interests, rather than the sectarian and political affiliations that politicians have instrumentalized since the Civil War to turn the GLC into a tool to protect their interests.

Socialist forum member Bassem Cheet summed up the criticism lobbed at the GLC by seven politicians, union leaders and activists from across the political spectrum in interviews about the future of Lebanon?s labor movement: ?It is not a union. It is just an empty shell that was smashed to nothing between 1997 and 2004.?

Even the GLC?s own members, such as Georges Hajj, the head of the Federation of Bank Employees? Union, characterized the activities of the GLC over the past year as ?a complete failure,? singling out the union?s inability to modernize the NSSF and the battle over the minimum wage as particularly catastrophic for employees.

When asked to compare the UCC and GLC, Hajj said, ?You cannot compare oil and water.?

?The difference is that the UCC is completely independent from any political parties and moreover they really represent employees in the public sector. They have a real cause,? he said.

?The situation within the GLC is completely different. The majority of unions are dependent on political parties and these parties completely dominate the action of the federations to the point where they cannot move unless they have approval from the parties they represent,? he explained.

Samir Farah of the Friedrich Ebert Stiffung Institute in Beirut, traces the problems that riddle the GLC and that have prevented the formation of an independent trade union movement back to Lebanon?s labor law, which requires all syndicates to get permits from the Labor Ministry to be officially recognized by the government.

The Labor Ministry, for instance, has been controlled by a March 8 politician since 2007.

?I have to say the GLC is a mirror of the country right now in its confessional and political divisions, [which] ... have paralyzed its activity,? Farah said.

?They are the official representative of the workers in Lebanon, but actually I feel other trade union organizations are growing up and taking its place, such as the teachers syndicate and the banking employee?s federation,? he added.

The UCC currently represents more than 40 independent syndicates and has more than 140,000 members, mainly employed in the civil service or as public and private school teachers, according to its head, Hana Gharib.

Farah believes the UCC made a huge breakthrough with the salary scale negotiations, but will need to capitalize on this success in the future in order to expand its base beyond teachers and public sector workers, who still do not have the right to legally unionize.

?It?s a long struggle for them, but they are on track to be the legitimate representative of public sector workers in contravention of Lebanese law.?

The only person The Daily Star interviewed who believes the GLC could still legitimately claim to represent the interests of the working class is Ghassan Ghosn, who has headed the union since 1997, but does not deny that the organization is politicized.

?All of the labor unions in Lebanon and the world are backed by political parties and the GLC is no exception. Why don?t you ask the UCC which parties back them?? Ghosn said.

He told The Daily Star that the GLC currently represents 42 labor unions and has fought tirelessly for the rights of its 400,000 members for the past 15 years, most notably when it launched a series of strikes two years ago to demand a larger increase in the minimum wage than the one proposed by the Cabinet.

He also pointed out that the UCC was not even officially recognized by the government.

?I don?t care what the UCC says. We are the ones who fought hard to help the teachers and civil servants get their rights. If they don?t like the salary adjustments which we obtained for them in February 2012 then they shouldn?t have collected this raise.?

UCC head Gharib, along with other critics, dismissed the settlement the GLC reached with the government as one its many betrayals of the working class over the past 15 years.

?The GLC always yields to the pressures of the employers and for this reason the confederation accepted a deal to raise the minimum wage from LL500,000 to LL670,000 only. Imagine that Labor Minister Charbel Nahhas wanted to raise the minimum wage to LL965,000, but Ghassan Ghosn bowed to the pressure of the employers.?

Hajj still hopes the GLC will reform its policies from within and released a labor manifesto earlier this week outlining a plan that would allow it to effectively protect the interests and rights of the country?s workers.

The first step of the manifesto calls for proportional representation in the GLC. Right now each of the 42 syndicates in the GLC have two representatives, which means a larger union like the Federation of Bank Employees?, which represents 10,000 workers, has the same voting rights as significantly smaller ones. The GLC should also clarify how the organization functions and the rights and duties of each committee, according to the manifesto.

Nahhas believes the GLC abdicated its role over the past 16 years and is not optimistic about its reform prospects.

?The simple fact is that a new union movement is emerging after 20 years of complete repression,? he said. ?The core of this movement is the UCC ... [which] has already passed a very difficult benchmark with the negotiation over the salary scale increase. This movement has clearly shown its independence from the political forces.?

It remains to be seen whether the UCC will successfully mobilize a broader base of workers in the coming year.

Source: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Local-News/2013/May-01/215653-politics-undercuts-lebanons-traditional-union.ashx

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