All men created equal?

Last night I watched a very interesting clip from the Colbert Report about gay marriage. This led me to think about our in class discussions about civil rights. As we have discussed in our modern times everyone has equal rights now, but do they really? Clearly gays in our country do not have the same right as others, they are not allowed to marry and people are openly hostile to them as an existence. Regardless of whether it is a choice or not, (which is a whole other issue), gays should have the same right as all other types of people. It was not until last week that hate crimes legislation covered hate crimes against gays. To me that is ridiculous, how can a clear minority such as gays, not be covered under the hate crimes? Where so often in the news we hear about these attacks on gays throughout our country. In the show, Colbert talks about how in the state of Washington where gay civil unions has been passed, a group of people have started a petition to change the law. However these people refuse to produce the list because they do not want the people who signed the petition to be outed. As Colbert says about these people, "I don't believe it is a choice, I believe you're born thinking gays don't have the right to get married or even be joined in union. And folks, the gays have no right to out those people". In his sarcastic tone, Colbert describes these people perfectly. These people are making decisions for others which have absolutely no direct effect on there lives what so ever based on either a religious preference or the fact that "they just don't like gays". Who gives these people the right to take away civil liberties from others that they are granted? This also leads me to the point that, should religious preference have a say over our judicial system? Should these people be able to pass laws taking away civil liberties based solely on their religious preference?

Fox News, is it really news?

I recently came across an article about Fox News and its bias. As most Americans do I follow my countries news, I realize that all news has a bias behind it, but believe that as a free journalism country I am still being told the truth. That is until I started reading Fox News. The bias behind this news corporation is absolutely absurd, as White House communications director Anita Dunn says it is "the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party". Everything they broadcast is a Republican based theory and some of which is completely false. Such as take the health care debate the statements that Obama is trying to initiate "death panels" to decide whether the elderly will live or not. A statement which could not be falser, but is still broadcasted by Fox News as a fact and crime that the Obama administration is commiting. They are brainwashing Americans with the frequency of false facts that they put out into the free journalism market and are openly against our current President and his administration. As an American I have to ask, as a country where do we draw the line in allowing our journalist's to state knowingly false facts? Here is the article which I found

131 million dollars, really?

Although this might be a bit late, I feel the need to blog about the absurd transfer fee that the superpower soccer team Real Madrid bought Christiano Ronaldo for. For 131 million dollars they bought the rights to the player and his contract from Manchester United. 131 million dollars, which equals out to close too 211,000 euros a week. The 131 million dollars was just the rights to the player, not his contract as well, which leads me to ask, is any person worth that much money? Espeically in our struggling economic times, how can a club who is already in debt shell out that much money for not just one player, but 5 others who turned out to cost the club 360 million dollars this summer alone. Flooding this much money into the market will obviously cause inflation and Real Madrid now have a debt of 296 million euros. What are your thoughts, is winning worth that much money? Are those players worth that much money? \

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=678183&cc=5901

Brazil still has slavery?

After our discussions about slavery, it reminded me of a article I had previously seen, that Brazil is still releasing some of its citizens from slavery. Including releasing around 4700 slaves last year alone. Almost 400 years after slavery was first started in Brazil, they are still struggling to rid the country completely of slaves. My first thoughts are, how could this possibly still be going on in a country such as Brazil? As the 10th largest economy in the world, how can they still allow slaves in their country? Atleast since 2004 they have admitted that they have a problem and have sent out task forces to track down and release these slaves, I find it ridiculous that since banning slavery in 1888 they have not cracked down to completely eliminate it. As a country that is developing nation they should figure out and eliminate slavery before they are considered a world power, as they are on the way to becoming as one of the worlds largest economies. Here is a link to the article about the slavery.