Gwyneth Paltrow's life is a WAR (video)

I. Rony, Wisdom Quarterly; Maeve Reston (latimes.com); Gwyneth Paltrow (goop.com)

What'd I say, right? Designer Amy Kehoe, superstar Gwyneth Paltrow, and designer Todd Nickey attend a Goop event in Los Angeles (Michael Buckner/Getty Images/latimes.com)

 
Cindy calls Gwyn's war comments ignorant, selfish

Online comments are hurt like war

When Gwyneth Paltrow stirred controversy this week by comparing her daily struggles with Internet trolls to the “dehumanizing” experience of soldiers at war, she messed with the wrong woman: Cindy McCain [wife of the horrible, Sarah Palin-picking, NDAA-promoting, Ukraine-stirring, Hillary-loving, Vietnam POW and Senate Republican war hawk].

 

Hillary Clinton-John McCain friendship blossoms (again)

Hearing about Paltrow’s comments, the wife of Arizona Sen. John McCain took to Twitter, calling the actress “a joke” and stating that “My 2 sons serving in the military should talk to her.” (McCain’s son Jimbo served in Iraq as a Marine, and her son Jack is a Navy lieutenant).

In an interview on Thursday with HLN Now TV, she went a step further, calling Paltrow’s comments “ignorant” and “selfish” and offering to take her to meet with veterans.

 

Katy Perry: I'm on meds

“I would encourage Gwyneth Paltrow -- and I would be happy to go with her -- to go sit down with some troops who have served in Afghanistan or Iraq and talk to them about what really goes on, and perhaps meet some of the young men and women who have lost limbs from this,” Cindy McCain said on HLN Now TV. “It’s Hollywood; I don’t know what else to say.” More

COMMENTARY

Shut your trap, shut it, shut it!

Hey, dummy! Leave Gwynny alone!!! Don't you realize she's going through the Holocaust of "conscious uncoupling" -- which ex-husband Chris Martin ends his silence on like Godzilla clearing his throat before doing an extended Coldplay whine song? Why don't you go send some care packages to your war brood? And leave the Gooper to carry on shining her superior light on the rest of the world? Pick on Katie FED UP Couric, or Ann Coulter or, hey, have you noticed he's talking to close family friend and Democratic war-loving elitist Hills Clinton?

(ABC News) GMA Buddhist Dan Harris takes Katie Couric's "Fed Up" 10-Day No Sugar Challenge. Why? Sugar is killing us, making us mental, sickly, and possibly obese.

• Racist Donald Sterling, Clippers owner, mentally unfit
• Neko Case blasts Playboy, excellent Mad Men reference 
• First Play: F--ked Up, Glass Boys 
• The 8 most bonkers musical WikiHow pages
• First Play: Matthew Barber, Big Romance 
• 12 reasons why being an indie rock fan is the worst 
• Organ porn: OSM's Jean-Willy Kunz' enormous instrument
• Pop: Every Pharrell Williams hit starts exactly same way 
• Slayer’s lasting electronic and hip-hop influence
  VIDEO: Kids interview Slayer vocalist Tom Araya

  Rock: This is what Slayer sounds like on a ukulele
   
  (Rob Scallon) "War Ensemble" on heavy metal ukelele
  

China [not] closing forced labor camps (video)

CC Liu, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; BBC.co.uk

China has forced labor camps for lower cost merchandise, but who cares? That merchandise goes mainly to the USA and Europe. It is not only for forcing free labor out of "undesirables" or promoting communism; it is for destroying civil liberties and promoting capitalism. If we don't care, we do not understand that there is no Xmas Without China. Today China announced the camps' closure, but that may just mean a change of sign boards.

World Buddhist Forum III, 2012 (china.org.cn)

Many celebrated last week's announcement that China will abolish its much-hated "re-education through labor" system.

 

The system, which dates back to the 1950s, allowed the Chinese police to send anyone to prison for up to four years without a trial. [Now Americans face the same fate under the 2014 NDAA.] A labor camp sentence was almost impossible to appeal. 

 

Abuse not limited to Tibetan minority (NPR)

"The...labor system was arbitrary, it was abusive, it was unconstitutional," explains Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher with rights group Human Rights Watch. He argues that the system's abolition opens the door for legal reform in China. 

(MY) China's slave labor camps make toys and electronics for the West

"Sometimes we have no choice; we work till dawn. When you work all night you become dizzy and your eyes hurt because you can't take any breaks." SANTA'S WORKSHOP explores the real world of China's toy factories. Workers speak of long working hours, low wages, and dangerous work places. Those who protest or try to organize trade unions risk imprisonment. Low labor costs attract more and more companies to China. Today more than 75% of our toys are made in China. But this industry takes its toll on the workers and on the environment. European and American buyers blame bad conditions on Chinese suppliers. They say that increasingly hard competition gives them no option. Believe it? What can we do?

• YEAR IN PHOTOS: China 2013
• PHOTOS: Christmas around the world

Big Leshan Budddha (leana.niemand3/flickr)

"There's no point in trying to improve the criminal law system, trying to decrease the incidents of torture, forced confessions, and miscarriage of justice if the police can just go another route and send someone without any kind of procedure and due process for up to four years to a labor camp," Mr. Bequelin says.

 

China had 260 labor camps holding 160,000 inmates at the start of this year, according to figures from the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights Watch. But that number seems to be shrinking. The Shanghai government announced on Wednesday that it has already released all of the people held at its labor camps. 

(AH) iPad: Secret Horrors Inside Chinese Foxconn Factory City as 

American journalist gains access to see how iPads are really made.

 

"Changing sign boards"

Top of Leshan Buddha (Joegwolf/flickr)

Still, some fear that the extra-legal camp system will disappear in name only. Most of the people locked up under the re-education through labor system are detained for drug offenses -- either selling or buying small quantities of illegal narcotics. [The same happens to an increasing number of Americans in possession of addictive prescription narcotics and pain killers. More

• VIDEO: Russia's adrenaline junkies seek YouTube fame