Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

As the process of adopting amendments to the Georgian Constitution enters what is intended to be the final phase, the level of recriminations between parliament speaker Irakli Kobakhidze, the constitutional lawyer who chaired the commission that drafted the changes, and Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili has reached a new level of intensity after confidential interim comments on the draft amendments by the Council of Europe's Venice Commission were leaked last week to the Georgian media.

Kobakhidze publicly blamed the president's office for that breach of confidentiality. Then, when Margvelashvili's parliamentary press secretary, Ana Dolidze, denied that Margvelashvili had ever received those comments, first deputy parliament speaker Tamara Chugoshvili said she had e-mail confirmation from the Venice Commission that the comments had indeed been sent to the president's office.

Meanwhile, five civil-society organizations and two extraparliamentary political parties have made a last-ditch appeal to postpone the parliamentary debate on the amendments until the autumn parliamentary session, the website Civil.ge reported on June 8. They expressed doubt that it would be possible to hold an in-depth discussion of the Venice Commission's recommendations and reach the maximum consensus in the limited time available.

Kobakhidze and Margvelashvili have been at odds since the process of drafting the amendments got under way late last year, trading accusations of insincerity, intransigence, and ignoring the interests of democracy and the Georgian people.

Margvelashvili announced at the outset that he and his staff would boycott the work of the constitutional commission because he had not been named to co-chair it. Instead, he launched his own personal campaign under the slogan "The Constitution Belongs to Everyone." While the stated aim of that campaign was to elucidate public attitudes to the proposed changes, the primary focus was on tapping into public indignation over the proposed abolition of direct presidential elections, and to a lesser degree on the risks Margvelashvili claimed were inherent in the proposed abolition of the National Security Council subordinate to the president, which he heads.

Those controversial changes were among several proposed by the ruling Georgian Dream party, whose members dominated the work of the constitutional commission. Others related to the anticipated transition from the present mixed proportional/majoritarian electoral system to a fully proportional one in which all 150 lawmakers will be elected on the basis of party lists -- a change for which opposition parties have long been lobbying.

Opposition politicians nonetheless objected vehemently that two other proposed changes effectively negated the anticipated benefits of switching to the proportional system. The first was the abolition of election blocs while preserving the existing 5 percent barrier for parties to qualify for parliamentary representation that, the opposition argues, effectively leaves small parties with no chance of winning any seats. Kobakhidze's stated rationale for that change was that it would contribute to the emergence of half a dozen strong parties rather than the survival of a multiplicity of small ones.

The second was the proposal that all the parliamentary mandates that remained unallocated as a result of votes cast for parties that failed to surmount the 5 percent hurdle should go to whichever party garnered the largest number of votes. Opposition parties construed that provision as intended to ensure that Georgian Dream preserves indefinitely its current constitutional majority. (Georgian Dream won the October 2016 parliamentary elections with 115 of the 150 mandates.) In light of that repeated criticism, prominent Georgian Dream lawmaker Gia Volsky suggested in late May that it might be preferable to preserve the existing mixed system.

In early May, civil-society groups and NGOs had appealed to the Venice Commission of expert constitutional lawyers to rule on whether the proposed amendments are appropriate and acceptable in the Georgian context, even though Kobakhidze has said repeatedly over the past few months that parliament will not endorse any amendment that the Venice Commission deems inappropriate.

And during talks with Georgian officials in Berlin later in May, Venice Commission experts were quoted as expressing overall approval of the proposed amendments while at the same time stressing the need for unspecified minor changes and to reach the maximum consensus.

The Venice Commission was scheduled to unveil its formal assessment of the planned changes on June 16, after which the parliament was to vote on the amendments in the first and second readings before the end of the spring session in late June. It therefore seems likely that the interim recommendations the Venice Commission sent to Tbilisi last week were intended as both guidance and gentle pressure on the Georgian leadership to tone down the most controversial proposals in time to meet that deadline and thus save face.

Venice Weighs In

As quoted by the website Interpressnews.ge, the Venice Commission's experts concluded that the proposed changes constitute "a positive step forward that will strengthen democracy, the supremacy of the law, and constitutional order." At the same time, they noted that Georgia "lacks a lengthy tradition of independence of the judiciary." They further registered the risk that the majority will continue to dominate the parliament and called for a system of checks and balances to preclude that, such as establishing a bicameral parliament and strengthening the role of the parliamentary opposition.

As for the proposed transition to a proportional system, the commission described it as a positive step but went on to argue that taken together, the 5 percent hurdle, the proposed abolition of electoral blocs, and the proposed allocation to the winning party of all unapportioned mandates "limit the influence of the proportional system to the detriment of pluralism and the smaller parties."

The commission therefore recommended considering alternative variants, such as that the unallocated mandates either be divided among all the parties that garner 5 percent of the vote in proportion to the percentage they received, or that an upper limit be placed on the number of unallocated mandates the winning party would be entitled to, or that the barrier for parliamentary representation be lowered to 2-3 percent.

With regard to the office of the president, the Venice Commission reportedly warned that the transition to the indirect election of the president by an electoral college comprising the 150 parliament deputies and 150 regional representatives "should not lead to the constant election of the presidential candidate proposed by the majority."

The commission's experts reportedly did not offer any recommendation with regard to the National Security Council. Just days before their interim evaluation became public knowledge, the Tbilisi Strategic Discussion, a forum convened by Margvelashvili, released a communique arguing that the proposed constitutional amendments, including the abolition of the National Security Council, would further weaken Georgia's defense capacity insofar as they do not provide "a full-fledged and coherent legal and institutional framework for security policy formulation, planning, execution and oversight." The 27 signatories, among them two former defense ministers, three former deputy defense ministers, and a former deputy foreign minister, therefore called for revising the time frame for passage of the constitutional amendments in order to allow for a detailed analysis of the threats the country faces, Civil.ge reported.

The Georgian parliament is unlikely to heed that warning, however. Kobakhidze has already gone on record as saying that "all the Venice Commission's comments are acceptable [to us]. We have promised that they will all be taken into consideration." He added that Georgian Dream was discussing the optimum limit on the number of unallocated parliamentary mandates to which the winning party would be entitled. At the same time, Kobakhidze noted that the Venice Commission did not reject outright either the proposed abolition of electoral blocs, or the 5 percent hurdle for parliamentary representation, which he pointed out was characteristic of the electoral systems of most EU member states. Those remarks suggest the party is unwilling to yield on those points.

Georgian Dream is even less likely to revise its proposal to switch to the indirect election of the president. It has already made one concession by agreeing that the new mechanism will go into effect only in 2023, thereby preserving the possibility for Margvelashvili to run for a second term next year.

How the tensions between the Georgian Dream-dominated parliament and the president's office will play out in the coming weeks after Kobakhidze publicly accused the president of lies, sabotage of the reform process, and systematic attacks on the parliament can only be guessed at.

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President, Speaker Trade Barbs Over Georgia's Draft Constitutional Changes - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

Annamarie Swails is preparing for her lecture Saturday at Sand Ridge Nature Center about a historical figure. But the man she will discuss won't be someone obscure to her but rather close to her heart her great-great-grandfather, Stephen Atkins Swails, among the first black soldiers commissioned by the Union Army.

Swails will make her presentation at the South Holland center as part of its Juneteenth Day celebration, which commemorates the June 19, 1865, announcement of the abolition of slavery in Texas.

The center's event also will include interpretive hikes where the Underground Railroad passed. There also will be Juneteenth bingo and traditional crafts for youths, cabin tours and cultural artifacts on display, including a quilt from the Underground Railroad.

During Swails' lecture, she said she plans to discuss her family's background while highlighting Stephen Atkins Swails' contributions during and after his service as a lieutenant in the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, which Annamarie Swails said also was depicted in the movie "Glory."

"He was a man who was determined to do what he needed to do to help his people, and it's something I'm very proud of," said Swails, of Calumet City. "(Stephen) needed somebody to tell his story, and it ended up being me."

Swails was not always aware of her historical roots, but after she realized the impact her great-great-grandfather had from the Civil War until his death, she began her journey of sharing his history.

He was a soldier, as well as a lawyer and politician after the war, and Swails said she wants people to have a broad understanding of his accomplishments. Her presentations are opportunities to educate those who aren't familiar with his role in American history, and she said they are also a way of carrying on his legacy.

Gerald Porter Jr.

Annamarie Swails holds a photo of her great-great grandfather Stephen Atkins Swails, the first black soldier commissioned by the Union Army.

Annamarie Swails holds a photo of her great-great grandfather Stephen Atkins Swails, the first black soldier commissioned by the Union Army. (Gerald Porter Jr.)

This year's Juneteenth Day celebration will be the third in which Swails, who has lived in Calumet City since 2009, is included in the celebratory event. Even though she did not know about Sand Ridge Nature Center's historical programs prior to her involvement, she said she cannot help but be impressed with their work.

"I was so blown away," Swails said. "For what they're doing, I really tilt my hat off to them. I've been telling a lot of people about what they do, and I'm just so proud of what they have to offer."

The 4-year-old Juneteenth Day event came as a result of the nature center's addition of its Underground Railroad program, and Sand Ridge Nature Center Director James Carpenter said its inclusion was an opportunity to interpret "tremendous history."

Carpenter added that most people believe slavery ended with Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, but it didn't completely end until June 19, 1865.

"We certainly wanted to commemorate the end of slavery in this country. We want to make people aware of the history," Carpenter said. "We need to remember the horrible things that happened, and we need to also recognize people's resilience."

Carpenter also said the event will provide the community with an educational experience and a chance to celebrate the importance of this chapter in American history.

"If we're going to tell the whole story of the founding and development of this country if we're going to cover the major events that occurred you can't do that without a story about the Underground Railroad and Juneteenth," Carpenter said.

gporterjr@tronc.com

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Sand Ridge Nature Center to host Juneteenth Day event, 'commemorate the end of slavery' - Chicago Tribune

No time to work: On Child Labour Act The Hindu Nonetheless, the scepticism aroused by the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2016 over the government's commitment towards complete abolition of child labour will persist. The ILO treaties are about the minimum age at which a ... and more »

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No time to work: On Child Labour Act - The Hindu

by: Field Sutton Updated: Jun 14, 2017 - 6:24 PM

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. - An out-of-state group--funded by out-of-state dollars is setting up a Florida operation to fight the state's death penalty.

The group, Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, plans on lobbying lawmakers in Tallahassee to influence the states potential abolition of capital punishment.

During an announcement made on the steps of Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayalas office, Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty told Channel 9s Field Sutton it believes it will be able to build bi-partisan support for repealing Floridas death penalty statutes.

Photos: Death row inmates in Orange County

"We urge these prosecutors to take a stand for life, and for fiscal responsibility, and to prudently only seek sentences other than death, said Mark Hyden, withConservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty.

James Purdy, the elected public defender for Volusia and surrounding counties, cited one study during his speech Wednesday pegging the cost of the state's death penalty at more than $50 million.

Read: Florida Supreme Court: Death penalty recommendation must be unanimous

"Imagine what it would be like if we could have (an extra $50 extra million) or more a year to pay for teachers, to put police officers back on the street, Purdy said.

Rafael Zaldivar, the father of a son who was murdered in 2012, accused the group of overthinking the death penaltys purpose.

Read: Florida Supreme Court overturns death sentence for Bessman Okafor

"It is the ultimate punishment for heinous crimes. That's all it is, Zaldivar said. "Once one of their wives or children are molested, raped and murdered, they'll be on the other side of the [argument]."

Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penaltyis part of New York-based Equal Justice USA, whose executive director acknowledges her teams past work with Ayala, including providing support in the state attorneys fight against the death penalty. The executive director said Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penaltyitself has "no contact or involvement" with the state attorney.

The leader of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty echoed that, telling Eyewitness News he and his associates have no connection with Ayala. He said it was a coincidence that the group held Wednesdays announcement outside the Orange-Osceola County States Attorneys Office.

2017 Cox Media Group.

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Out-of-state group fights Florida's death penalty - WFTV Orlando

Calls have been made for the Conservative Government to explain their pledge to scrap the Severn Crossing tolls.

In the manifesto ahead of the general election last week the party said they would abolish tolls.

Leader Theresa May said that by abolishing tolls for the 25m journeys made on the crossing every year it would strengthen the links between communities.

The party had already pledged to halve tolls by 2018 and possibly introduce free-flowing tolls.

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The Department for Transport has confirmed there is no current date for any abolition of the charges.

A spokeswoman said: The government is working on how it will implement its commitments. There will be an announcement in due course.

In their manifesto the Labour party said they would work with Welsh Government to scrap tolls on the Severn bridges.

Newport East MP Jessica Morden has said the Conservatives should just get on with it.

She said: Both the Tories and Labour promised to scrap the Tolls if elected so the Tories should just get on with it. The eyes of Welsh commuters and businesses will be on the Queens speech when they have finally written it. As I have said in parliamentary debates it is important that the staff are kept fully informed and looked after.

Business groups also say more detail is needed.

Ben Mottram from the Federation of Small Businesses said: There is a consensus on this. The technology is the only question mark.

There is an expectation that it has been promised and that it will be delivered. It is one of the things that Government has in its armoury to boost confidence.

This could be a confidence boost for business. We want this taking forward.

We know it wont be tomorrow as the bridges are still in public ownership but that shouldnt be a significant barrier.

What we want to see a clear timetable for implementation for the eradication of the tolls.

This isnt a revolutionary measure. Its been a long time coming.

It is something that they have in their control and they need to understand and implement measures that in the absence of any confidence of how the Brexit landscape is going to shape up, they need to do what they can to instil confidence.

There are many things that the Government doesnt know and that the UK Government doesnt have control of. This is something they have control of and they can work with the things that are actually available. This is one of those things.

Denise Lovering from the Freight Transport Association said there were still many questions over the Conservative pledge.

She said: We have always taken the view that the tolls were detrimental to the Welsh economy but we have always been realistic enough to realise that someone will have to pay for the upkeep of the crossings.

When the manifesto pledge was made there was no mention of the upkeep costs and it just appeared the cost would be taken away.

She said that the aim from her group had always been to reduce the fee to an amount which meant there would still be money for maintenance.

She said that a select committee had previously found that amount to be 1.50 per vehicle far below the 20 charge for lorries or buses.

Is it going to be totally free or is there going to be some element of repair or maintenance cost? she said.

The two crossings will be operated by Highways England when they return to public ownership in 2018.

Annual maintenance costs are estimated at around 7m per year.

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Calls for Government to explain pledge to scrap Severn Crossing tolls - WalesOnline

We begin with circle time, then move on to Leninist doctrine.

Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker. Photo by Thinkstock.

Before I became a parent, this countrys lack of affordable, government-supported child care was something I thought about sympathetically every once in a while, in between long yoga classes and leisurely novel-reading. I always diagnosed this hole in our social services as a feminist issuethere arent publicly funded day cares because conservatives dont want women to work.

But a few weeks ago, as I negotiated a change in my baby daughters day care setup and inwardly raged against our countrys sorry support for child care, I suddenly remembered reading historian Nancy Cohens 2013 piece in The New Republic about the role of red-baiting in the failure to pass universal child care in the early 1970s. Do we really lack good, publicly funded preschools not only because some people think women should stay at home, but also because some people are afraid of Communism? Maybe! At the very least, the government-run day care services the Soviet Union provided have shadowed our efforts to get a version of the same in the United States.

The first Americans to think and talk about Soviet day care were leftist feminists in the 1920s, who praised it as an exciting innovation. The Bolsheviks believed that capitalism had created a new contradiction, felt most painfully by women, between the demands of work and the needs of family, historian Wendy Z. Goldman writes. Capitalism would never be able to provide a systematic solution to the double burden women shouldered. Services such as day care and communal kitchens and laundries were the Bolsheviks way of putting into practice Marx and Engels ideas about eliminating the oppressive structures of the bourgeois family. S. Ia. Volfson, a Soviet sociologist, wrote in 1929 that the traditional family will be sent to a museum of antiquities so that it can rest next to the spinning wheel and the bronze axe, by the horsedrawn carriage, the steam engine, and the wired telephone. Historian Julia Mickenberg writes in American Girls in Red Russia: Chasing the Soviet Dream that many American suffragists and New Women were drawn to the Soviet Union because it embodied a promise of the good life and explicitly included womens emancipation in that promise. (Disclosure: Mickenberg was one of my dissertation advisors.)

When American feminists visited the new nation in the 1920s, they wrote about what they saw in glowing terms. The Soviets set up day nurseries at a time when Americans would have known them only as charities operated to house poor children while their mothers worked. In a 1928 book, American visitor Jessica Smith described the day nurseries in glowing terms: Wide sunny rooms, rows of cribs with gay coverlets, play rooms with slides and chutes and steps to exercise tiny limbs, great colored blocks, pictures on the walls. Mothers could drop by to nurse their infants, and a sanitary kitchen with a trained dietician made the proper food for every age.

This beautiful dream of quality universal day careif it ever truly existedwent sour quickly. As Mickenberg writes, material shortages and deep-seated sexism within Russian society limited womens gains. By the middle of the 1930s, Goldman argues, the process of forced collectivization created fresh streams of homeless, starving children, and rapid industrialization subjected the family to new and terrible strains. Trying to get things back on track, leaders began to encourage Soviet women to return to the home, and female workers lost much of the ground they had gained in entering male-dominated fields. Workplace discrimination continued despite government regulations, and cuts in funding for day care followed.

During the same time period in the U.S., the Depression and then World War II forced a reimagining of mothers role in the economy. As more middle-class moms went to work, the idea that day care was a welfare service for desperately poor single mothers began to transform, historian Elizabeth Rose writes. The understanding had been that day care was simply custodial: a way to keep poor kids from cutting themselves with knives or falling out of windows while their mothers toiled at factories. Now, however, people started to think of day care as potentially educational or enriching. In this social climate, the Works Progress Administration created 1500 preschools, mainly as an employment scheme for teachers. These schools served 50,000 children between 1933 and 1943. It was the first time the government put money into early childhood care, with hopes that the successful pilot would lead to more permanent and extensive services. WPA nursery school leaders expected their program to lead to public preschools for all young children, historian Molly Quest Arboleda writes. During World War II, the Lanham Act funded child care centers (including some of the former WPA schools) that served as many as 1.5 million kids.

In the immediate postwar period, many women wanted to see the Lanham Act centers stay open. One activist fighting to keep public centers open in Philadelphia at the end of the war wrote to the Childrens Bureau: Weve won the bloodiest war in history, now lets win permanent Day Care for our children.

It was not to be. Molly Quest Arboleda found that many women involved in the WPA nursery schools, either as teachers or supporters, faced accusations of Communist sympathies. Susan B. Anthony II (the more famous Susans grandniece) came under investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee for her work with the Congress of American Women, which had named the conversion of wartime day care centers into permanent social fixtures as one of its three main goals. Governor Thomas Dewey of New York called protestors asking him to keep child care centers open Communists. Elizabeth Rose found that many of those who wrote in to a Philadelphia Bulletin forum on publicly funded child care used anti-Communist language. One wrote, America is built on the bedrock of family ties and we refuse to imitate the Soviet Union, where 6,000,000 children are in such centers while the mothers are in forced labor camps.

The Soviet Unions child care system was indeed expanding and becoming more systematized. In 1956, wanting more women to enter the workforce, Nikita Khrushchevs regime started an early childhood education program that became an extensive network of kindergartens and nurseries. These day cares did (as American critics charged) de-emphasize parental involvement in childrens education, instead leaning on the theories of psychologists and pedagogues who were considered more up-to-date than parents. Psychologist Alison Clarke-Stewart writes that childrens activities in Soviet day cares were the most highly developed and uniform in the world, and that nothing was left to chance in the curriculumeverything was planned and specified, even the temperature. Children were taught industriousness, aesthetics, charactergroup awareness, problem solving, and creativity. Soviet day cares put a strong emphasis on cooperation and sharing, and as soon as they could talk, children weregiven training in evaluating and criticizing each others behaviors from the point of view of the group.

These readily available, sophisticated, but highly standardized day cares made an impression on Western visitors wary of Communist centralization and indoctrination. One such impression may have led to the downfall of a possible American equivalent to the Soviet day care system. The Comprehensive Child Development Act, which got through Congress in 1971 before being vetoed by Richard Nixon, would have created nationally funded child care centers providing early childhood services and after-school care, as well as nutrition, counseling, and even medical and dental care. The centers would charge parents on a sliding scale. But Pat Buchanan, as special assistant to the President, convinced Nixon to veto the plan.

Brigid Schulte interviewed Buchanan about this decision for her book Overwhelmed, and he told her hed visited the Soviet Union when the CCDA was being debated: We went to see the Young Pioneers, where these little kids four, five, and six years old were being instructed in Leninist doctrine, reciting it the way I used to recite Catechism when I was in the first grade, he said. Either this experience truly, deeply affected Buchanan, or perhaps he wantedas the bills sponsor Walter Mondale later wroteto use the issue to rally cultural conservatives and create a little maneuvering room to make the China trip. (If Nixon threw conservatives a bone in the matter of day care, he could more easily sell them his plan to normalize relations with Communist China.)

Whatever his motivation, Buchanan successfully influenced Nixon to inject anti-communist language into his veto. Our response to the challenge of child care must be a measured, evolutionary, painstakingly considered one, consciously designed to cement the family in its rightful position as the keystone of our civilization, Nixon wrote. For the Federal Government to plunge headlong financially into supporting child development would commit the vast moral authority of the National Government to the side of communal approaches to child rearing over against the family-centered approach.

When Mondale and his co-sponsor, Representative John Brademas, tried again in 1975, grassroots fundamentalists torpedoed the revised legislation. As Nancy L. Cohen writes, an anonymous flyer circulated widely in churches in the South and West, claiming that the legislation would give children fantastical rights to sue their parents and organize labor unions. Sally Steenland, director of the faith and progressive policy initiative at the Center for American Progress, said of the conversation over day care at the time: I remember seeing books with these really alarming pictures of state-funded nurseries in the Soviet UnionSwaddled infants tightly wrapped in rows of beds side by side, massive rows, and it was impersonal and supposed to be terrifying. And it was like: this is daycare. According to Cohen, Buchanans redwashing of day care was a political hijacking so fabulously successful it wiped away virtually any trace of its own handiwork.

When my friends and I bemoan our own child care conundrums, anti-communism is not the first thing we blame. But on the right, writers and pundits still invoke it to condemn the very concept of government-funded day care. Michele Bachmann, speaking on the floor of Congress in 2009, characterized President Obamas vision for child rearing as send that little baby off to a government day care center from the day that baby is born. A cheerily designed website called Daycares Dont Care features a history of day care that sports a clip-art hammer and sickle. It quotes a woman who spent most of her childhood in Communist Polands daycares: The assembly line time table, with everyone having to perform together on cueThe grubby, institutional food. The absence of real contact with adults, which meant that fights and squabbles were usually settled on the survival of the fittest principle. In the Federalist, political scientist Paul Kengor explicates the Marxist idea of the abolition of the family, describing the Soviet push to put kids in day care and the Supreme Courts support for same-sex marriage as equally radical measures. On the website of Concerned Women for America, a blog post asserts, True feminist ideology is steeped in Marxist thought. The government must redistribute wealth, control businesses to make them hire us, and even take on the responsibility of raising our children via government daycare for us to be equal.

Does it help to know that some of the mindset keeping us from having government-funded day care is anti-communism, in addition to simple anti-feminism? Im not sure. But Im still making phone calls to figure out how to cover my daughters care on Fridays! That part I'm sure about.

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Your Child Care Conundrum Is an Anti-Communist Plot - Slate Magazine (blog)

The game, developed by newcomer Tim Soret, turned heads when it was revealed earlier today at E3, the worlds largest gaming expo.

It also attracted the fury of the social justice left, after it emerged that Soret once supported the GamerGate movement, which criticized feminist and leftist attempts to make the world of gaming politically correct.

Soret has also said he opposes feminism but supports egalitarianism.

Sorets claim that GamerGate was an egalitarian movement is borne out by the evidence.Two surveys of the movements political views, including my own, found that a majority of the movement were left-leaning liberals who happened to disagree with censorship and political correctness.Onesurvey even found that most GamerGate supporters voted for Barack Obama in 2012.

Zoe Quinn, the feminist games designer whose complaints about allegedly sexist internet trolls drove coverage of GamerGate, was quick to condemn Soret for endorsing the anti-censorship consumer movement.

Quinn is famous for Being Mad Online, and has arguably elevated the practice to an art form. She was even invited to the United Nations in 2015 to lecture the world on the dangers of cyberviolence.

Progressive anger is likely to increase when they learn more about the gamespolitical message, which offers a moderate critique of the left.

The game takes place in a future dystopia brought about by the rise of intelligent machines. Work has been abolished, and all humans (aside from the games protagonist) are sustained by a universal income. However, the abolition of work historically a leftist goal does not lead to utopia.

From the games website:

Humans first knew the era of survival. Then they knew the era of work. Now they live in the era of leisure. Machines have surpassed human labour not only in strength, but in precision, intellect, and creativity. Stabilised by universal income, people struggle to find their calling or identity, and define themselves by what they consume, rather than what they create.

According to Heat Street, Soret originally envisaged the game as a warning against extreme progressivism.

I find it interesting to show the danger of extreme progressivism, in the background of the game, the characters, and the story. Finally, well have another take on the cyberpunk oppression instead of Big Brother/1984/HAL/big companies. What if the surveillance, bullying, marginalization wont come from governments but from the Internet?

Leftists have been known to freak out when their favourite entertainers fail to make their acts sufficiently anti-Trump. If political neutrality is objectionable to leftists, the thought of a smart, visually appealing entertainment product that actuallycritiquestheir goals would send them into a tailspin.

It remains unclear, however, whether Sorets views have changedsince the comments published by Heat Street. In the wake of the controversy, Soret reiterated his belief in equality & inclusiveness but also acknowledged that the game will challenge techno-social progress as a whole.

Nevertheless, expect little, if any news coverage in the mainstream gaming press aboutThe Last Night,apart from outraged op-eds. Now that its developers former GamerGate sympathies have been revealed, however,politicized elements of the gaming press are unlikely to judge the game by its artistic merits alone.

Unfortunately for them, some left-leaning gaming outlets already published pieces onThe Last Nightslaunch trailer before news of its creators GamerGate heresyspread on social media.

The Verge, a Vox publication, called the trailer gorgeous.Polygon, regarded as one of the most leftist gaming sites, and hailed it as one of the best-looking indie games showed off by Microsoft at E3. Bleeding Cool praised its vibrant and highly stylized feel, while PC Gamer called it stunning.

The Last Nightis scheduled for release in 2018 on PC and Xbox One.

You can follow Allum Bokhari on Twitterandadd him on Facebook.Email tips and suggestions toabokhari@breitbart.com.

P.S. DO YOU WANT MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE DELIVERED RIGHT TO YOUR INBOX?SIGN UP FOR THE DAILY BREITBART NEWSLETTER.

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Leftist Rage Unleashed Against 'The Last Night' Creator During E3 ... - Breitbart News

Bengaluru: Thousands of contract pourakarmikas of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) on Tuesday called off their strike and decided to return to work from Wednesday after the state government promised to regularise their jobs by July.

In the afternoon, following instructions from chief minister Siddaramaiah, municipal administration minister Eshwar Khandre, social welfare minister H Anjaneya and mayor G Padmavathi met the sanitation workers at Bannappa Park and assured them that their demands would be met.

"We have been told that a meeting will be convened before June 21 to decide on the modalities of abolishing the contract system. We have agreed to this. We will return to work from Wednesday morning," said Muthyalappa, head of the Bengaluru wing of the pourakarmikas' association, at Bannappa Park.

The strike by these workers, who clean the streets and collect garbage from houses, had affected garbage collection and disposal in the city. They have been protesting under the banner of Karnataka Rajya Nagarapalike, Nagarasabha, Purasabhegala Pourakarmikara Mahasangha.

Anjaneya told the pourakarmikas: "The chief minister has promised to fulfill your demands, including abolition of the contract system, immediately. Your jobs will be regularised and salaries will be credited directly to your accounts. There will be no worry about the contractor mafia from now."

The pourakarmikas agitation had come a shock to the BBMP, which is already struggling with waste disposal. The pourakarmikas' strike is not the only problem the civic body faces. Residents of Mittaganahalli and Kannur villages on the outskirts of city continue to block BBMP's garbage trucks from entering the quarries near their villages to dump rubbish.

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Minister's Baahubali act

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Pourakarmikas end stir after govt promises to abolish contract ... - Times of India

Posted: Jun. 13, 2017 9:15 am

HANNIBAL, Mo. -- Juneteenth was celebrated early at the Hannibal Free Public Library on Monday.

Jim's Journey: The Huck Finn Freedom Center Executive Director Faye Dant presented local Civil War history, notable accomplishments of former Marion County slaves and community points of interest relating to African-American history.

Tying her presentation together was a four-panel exhibit on tour from Jefferson City's Missouri State Archives, titled "Divided Loyalties." The panel explains slavery in Missouri and African-Americans' role in the Civil War, among other similar topics.

"It's important for young people to know their roots and know that their descendants did good things in the community," Dant said. "Kids don't necessarily get this history in school, and this presentation gives people the opportunity to hear it."

During her presentation, Dant displayed a book she has been working on, tentatively titled "Enslavement to Emancipation." The book is filled with documents and photographs relating to African-American residents in Hannibal and Marion County. Several pages show the lineage and death certificates of many of the residents, and she encouraged audience members to submit their family history.

"If you're a native, you know some (of the well-known last names of residents) go far back," said Dant, a fifth-generation Hannibal resident.

She added that out-of-work writers during the Great Depression were tasked by the Works Progress Administration to interview and transcribe the stories of former slaves. Today people have access to those records.

"Too often, it was if you didn't tell it to your children, then that history is not documented anywhere," Dant said.

Gale Conley, whose grandfather was once a slave, attended the presentation so he could learn more about Hannibal's African-American history.

"I came because I wanted to know more about the town and the people in the town," he said. "I also enjoy what the Dants are doing (with historical research and Jim's Journey)."

Juneteenth, held annually on June 19, commemorates the June 19, 1865, announcement of the abolition of slavery in Texas and the emancipation of African-American slaves throughout the Confederate South.

On that day, federal troops arrived in Texas to force the freedom of slaves more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

For the last five years, the Hannibal Free Public Library has invited Dant to present an early Juneteenth program. Dant is on the board for the Missouri State Archives and was able to secure the loan of the "Divided Loyalties" exhibit, she said.

The exhibit will be displayed in the Hannibal library through July.

The 20th annual Juneteenth celebration will be held in Hannibal next Monday. There will be a 3 p.m. showing of the movie "The Children's March" at B&B Theatre. Following the showing, there will be a scavenger hunt downtown with prizes, Jim's Journey museum tours, a soul food demonstration and a cookout at 5 p.m.

The celebration is free and open to the public.

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Juneteenth presentation notes accomplishments of area former ... - Herald-Whig

BENGALURU: Pourakarmikas, civic workers of Bengaluru who keep neighbourhoods clean, withdrew their protest on Tuesday after the state government announced the abolition of the "exploitative" contract system. Henceforth, the workers' wages will be paid directly to their bank accounts and not to contractors.

Nearly 40,000 pourakarmikas from all over Karnataka had struck work since Monday, with over 4,000 of them camped at Banappa Park in the city, resulting in garbage pile-up across the city.

The protest was called off after Social Welfare Minister H Anjaneya and Municipal Administration Minister Eshwar Khandre assured them that their demands will be met.

Their demand for regularisation of service and modalities involved in direct wage payments will be discussed in an official meeting on June 20.

"The loot ends today," Anjaneya told the pourakarmikas. "The oppressive contract system will be abolished and your salaries will be paid directly by the municipal corporation," he said. Presently, payment of pourakarmikas' wages happens through contractors who employ them.

"It's a major victory," said advocate Clifton D'Rozario, who represents the BBMP Contract Pourakarmikas Association. "For many years now, we've been high lighting how problematic the contract system is. Hundreds of crores have been misappropriated by the contractor-official nexus. The contractor system has also meant that pourakarmikas, mostly Dalits, have been subjected to bonded labour-like work conditions."

But the protest is not over entirely."The protest has been postponed till June 20. We will resume our protest if the government fails to keep its word," Karnataka Safai Karmachari Federation president Narayana said. "There are 15,000 vacant posts of pourakarmikas.These were sanctioned in 1995 and much has changed since then. The sanctioned strength has to be reviewed," he added.

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Civic staff end stir on government Assurance - Economic Times