The Resignation of Finance Minister ,Christina Liu.

                      THE   SHOW-DOWN   of   the   morality  of   the  Legislative  Yuan  and  the  Executive  Yuan  or   the   effect   of   the  struggling   between  the   Executive  and   the  Legislative  Yuans  .  
                        Don't   touch   the  Capital   Gains   Tax  Law  ,   Mr.  New   Finance   Minister   !   The   version of  Capital      Gains  Tax  DRAFT  by   K.M.T.   Legislators  group  ,   will  make  Insider   Trading   .  Think   Clearly  and   Do   Clearly  !   God   bless   with  you   !  

Despite a dispute that has lasted for nearly two months, various relevant authorities have been unable to reach a consensus on a plan to impose a capital gains tax on stock investments. Instead, they are becoming increasingly divisive on the issue. The Cabinet should withdraw a version of the plan it previously submitted to the Legislature and should allow the next finance minister to draft a new one. Over the past month, the proposal by former Finance Minister Christina Liu has not only failed to convince the public, but legislators from the ruling Kuomintang have also abandoned her one after another, prompting her to resign as a result. The incident has impacted the credibility of President Ma Ying-jeou and the morale of his administration. Working under a severe time constraint, the KMT legislative caucus presented earlier this week an integrated version of the plan that combines different ideas put forth by its legislators. This version, which would offer the option of paying a stock transaction tax of between 0.02 percent and 0.06 percent in place of a capital gains tax, is realistic. It is not, however, in line with the principles of fairness, justice and taxing people according to their ability to pay. Instead of pushing through the plan in a hurry, the Cabinet should retract it for further consideration and allow the dispute to gradually calm down. (Editorial abstract -- May 31, 2012) (By Y.F. Low)

Syria Crisis Deepen in divisions .

                          It  presents  a  complicated   political  problem  according  to   the   various  interests   of  foreign  powers  .   It   would  be   another   Libya  .   The  U.S.   of  America  or  Israel   will   attack   Iran   .
U.S. officials are still looking to the U.N. and to Russia, a strong backer of Mr. Assad, to salvage any process leading to Mr. Assad's departure. Britain and France pledged to increase pressure on the regime, and British Foreign Secretary William Hague was in Moscow to try to gain Kremlin backing to force a negotiated political change at the top, similar to the way pressure from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states prompted Yemen's president to step down earlier this year. "This could be a key moment," insisted a senior U.S. official working on the Middle East.
But few Western diplomats expected Russia to make any dramatic move to push Mr. Assad out. And while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia was "deeply alarmed" by the massacre in Houla, he echoed the Syrian government in hinting that rebels were partly at fault and said, "both sides have obviously had a hand in the deaths of innocent people."

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Demonstrators protest Sunday in front of the Syrian consulate in Istanbul against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

On Sunday, Syrian authorities said gunmen funded by foreign powers were responsible for the killings.
For its part, the U.N. was facing growing criticism that its observers inside the country aren't helping to prevent a government crackdown. "We have all been warning that Syria is on a path to civil war, to sectarian war, to increasing fragmentation, all with very dire consequences," said Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Center think tank and a former U.N. official. "We've been on that path now for quite some time and certainly the Annan mission has not done very much to take us off that path."
On Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon defended the mission to the Security Council, writing, "There is a misconception, difficult to correct, about the role of unarmed military observers and what they can and cannot do."
With the situation worsening, Western diplomats cautioned that Syria presents a much more complicated political solution than Yemen, due to its intricate sectarian makeup and the numerous foreign powers with influence in the Arab country. Both Russia and Iran have emerged as the main financiers and arms-suppliers to Mr. Assad, while Turkey, the Gulf states, the U.S. and Europe have been backing opposition forces.

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Special envoy Kofi Annan, center, spoke with U.N. mission chief in Syria, Major General Robert Mood, left, and Mr. Annan's spokesman Ahmad Fawzi, following the envoy's arrival in Damascus on Monday for talks with top Syrian officials.

Many Arab officials have taken a more pessimistic tone in recent weeks, warning of a protracted civil war inside Syria that runs a risk of fracturing the country and spilling into neighboring Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. One scenario is that Syria becomes a failed state in which Mr. Assad maintains control of northern Syria and continues cooperating with Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, with other parts controlled by al Qaeda elements and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. "This would breed continued instability across the region," said a senior Arab intelligence official.

Chinese Currencies Manipulating is an issue for the U.S .

                    IT   IS   NOT  GOOD   FOR   each   other  .  
In 2010, the pressure for action on the renminbi began early in the year, when President Obama spoke harshly in February about China’s economic policies, stopping short of saying that China manipulates its currency. The following month, 130 members of Congress sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Geithner, demanding that the Obama administration designate China as a currency manipulator in a report due to Congress in April. A bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill aimed to force the administration’s hand, by making it easier to impose retaliatory trade barriers against Chinese goods. And the World Bank issued a report calling the renminbi overvalued.
Economists agree with that assessment. They said at the time that the Chinese currency was undervalued by 25 to 40 percent compared with the dollar and other currencies, and that the imbalance was hurting not only the United States but economies around the world, including the European Union, Brazil and India. Mr. Obama has held repeated conversations with President Hu Jintao since 2009.
The Chinese government has denied that the currency is overvalued or manipulated, and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao rejected American complaints as “a kind of trade protectionism,” making no plans for reform.
In June, China announced that it would allow greater flexibility in the value of its currency. But by September the renminbi had risen less than 2 percent against the dollar and actually fallen slightly against the trade-weighted averages of its trading partners’ currencies. Mr. Geithner went before Congress to urge China to allow “significant, sustained appreciation” of its undervalued currency; senators of both parties called for tougher measures.
During the annual gathering of heads of states at the United Nations in September, Mr. Obama devoted most of a two-hour meeting with China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, to the issue. In October, the head of the International Monetary Fund urged China to allow its currency to rise in value. And at the Group of 20 summit in South Korea in November, a meeting that revolved around trade and currency disputes, Mr. Obama used his sharpest language yet, stating bluntly that the renminbi “is undervalued. And China spends enormous amounts of money intervening in the market to keep it undervalued.”
By early 2011, it also appeared to many economists that the effort to keep the renminbi low was feeding China’s growing problems with inflation.
The central bank had been pumping out currency at an ever-accelerating pace over the past decade to limit the renminbi’s appreciation against the dollar. That strategy helped preserve a competitive advantage of Chinese exporters by keeping their prices relatively low on global markets — while also protecting the jobs of tens of millions of Chinese workers in export factories

                       

The European Parliment's Liberal Group , said that it is a Political Crisis .

                       It  is   a   big   problem  for   Europe  to   find  a   solution  of   Euro-crisis .
Europe is facing a political crisis of "unseen magnitude" because of EU leaders' failure to get to grips with the economic situation in the eurozone, the leader of the European Parliament's liberal group has said.
Guy Verhofstadt said that two months ago a number of Europe's leaders told the Parliament the crisis was over, but they were "dramatically wrong".
He said the euro crisis had spread from Greece, an economy representing just 2% of Europe's GDP, to the eurozone's third and fourth largest economies - Italy and Spain.
"It is not a crisis about Greece. It is not a crisis about Portugal, Ireland, Italy or Spain. In my opinion it is not even an economic crisis, or a financial crisis.
"It is simply a political crisis today, what we are facing in Europe, because our leaders are not able to take the right decisions at the right times."
The Belgian MEP urged EU leaders to establish a full economic and fiscal union, a debt mutualisation fund and a pact for growth, to steer the European economy to safety.
He said the ball was in the Commission's court, asking: "What are you waiting for?"
"Use your right of initiative, only you have it, and put on the table [at the summit] a real proposal for... a real growth package for Europe," he urged.
Mr Verhofstadt was speaking during a debate on preparations for the forthcoming informal EU growth summit on 23 May.
Useful links:
Democracy Live's guide to how the plenary sessions work.
A disclaimer on the use of simultaneous interpretations, on the European Parliament's website.

SEE ALSO

• Profile: Francois Hollande

Who , What , Why : Is it legal to hide in an Embassy ?

    China   dissident   Chen  Guang-cheng  is   unstable  minded  activist   !   He  is  not   a 
political  prisonal   who   escaped   from   House  Arrest  .  
                
This states that local police and security forces are not permitted to enter, unless they have the express permission of the ambassador - even though the embassy remains the territory of the host nation.
The convention is widely adhered to and is regarded as a basic pre-requisite for diplomatic relations.
"Embassies are privileged areas. The local authorities have no rights to enter," says Colin Warbrick, a specialist in international law and honorary professor at Birmingham University.

Continue reading the main story

High-profile embassy cases

• Manuel Noriega, President of Panama. Took refuge in the Vatican embassy in December 1989 (above). The US bombarded him with loud rock music 24/7 until he could no longer stand it, walked out, and was arrested
• Jozsef Mindszenty, Hungarian Catholic cardinal. He spent 15 years in the US embassy in Budapest from 1956-1971
• Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe's opposition leader took refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare in June 2008. In 2009 he was sworn in as prime minister in a power-sharing government

Human rights law provides a further layer of protection, in the form of the European Convention on Human Rights and - in the case of the US - the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

This means that the embassy is obliged to consider whether there is a real risk that the person could be killed or seriously injured if they were handed over to the local authorities. And if there is, then they could be held accountable if they give the person up.
How Chen gained entry to the embassy is unknown - whether he walked in by himself or was smuggled in by diplomats past Chinese security guards on the street outside. If he had been a fugitive from justice and had been smuggled in, then the US diplomats would be guilty of breaking Chinese law, Warbrick says.
Diplomats are obliged to comply with local law, he points out, even though they enjoy immunity from prosecution.
However, correspondents say Chen's house arrest, or "soft detention" in Chinese, was an unofficial measure imposed by the local authorities, not by a court, so he was not a fugitive

             

The Chronical of the R.O.C.

                             

Date	Historical Event
1895	Treaty of Shimonoseki
1912	Republic of China is founded
1937.07.07	Marco Polo Bridge Incident
1941.08.14	Atlantic Charter
1941.12 - 1945.08	World War II in the Pacific
1943.12.01	Cairo Declaration
1945.07.26	Potsdam Proclamation
1945.08.15	Japan's Emperor Surrenders
1945.09.02	Gen. MacArthur directs "representatives of Chiang Kai-shek" to come to Taiwan to accept Japanese surrender
1945.10.24	United Nations is founded
1945.10.25	Japanese troops in Taiwan surrender
1947.02.28 - 1950.04.30	The 228 Incident
1949.10.01	People's Republic of China is founded
1949.12	Republic of China personnel flee to Taiwan
1952.04.28	San Francisco Peace Treaty comes into force
1952.08.05	Treaty of Taipei comes into force
1955.03.03	ROC - USA Mutual Defense Treaty comes into force
1971.10.25	Republic of China is expelled from United Nations
1972.02.28	PRC & USA promulgate "Shanghai Communique"
1978.12.16	ROC is notified by USA of impending break in diplomatic relations
1979.01.01	PRC & USA promulgate Second Communique
1979.01.01	Taiwan Relations Act takes force
1980.01.01	ROC - USA Mutual Defense Treaty is cancelled
1982.08.17	PRC & USA promulgate Third Communique
2000.05.20	Democratic Progressive Party comes to power

                  The   U.N.  General  Assembly  505   was  adopted  on   February   ,1  1952  .  
                        Your   answes   are   right  !   God  bless   with  you   !  

Would the Taiwan Solidarity Union ( T.S.U. ) MEAN the Day of Potsdam ?

                       It   was  Ugly  activity  of   T.S.U.   in  a   Democratic  country  . It    has   no   relevant   issue   of  this     inauguration    day  .   Think  clearly   and   do   clearly  !  
  

Day of Potsdam and the Enabling Act

On 21 March 1933 the new Reichstag was constituted with an opening ceremony at the Garrison Church in Potsdam. This "Day of Potsdam" was held to demonstrate unity between the Nazi movement and the old Prussian elite and military. Hitler appeared in a morning coat and humbly greeted President von Hindenburg.^[149][150]

Paul von Hindenburg and Adolf Hitler on the Day of Potsdam, 21 March 1933

To achieve full political control despite not having an absolute majority in parliament, Hitler's government brought the Ermächtigungsgesetz (Enabling Act) to a vote in the newly elected Reichstag. The act gave Hitler's cabinet full legislative powers for a period of four years and (with certain exceptions) allowed deviations from the constitution.^[151] The bill required a two-thirds majority to pass. Leaving nothing to chance, the Nazis used the provisions of the Reichstag Fire Decree to keep several Social Democratic deputies from attending; the Communists had already been banned.^[152]
On 23 March, the Reichstag assembled at the Kroll Opera House under turbulent circumstances. Ranks of SA men served as guards inside the building, while large groups outside opposing the proposed legislation shouted slogans and threats toward the arriving members of parliament.^[153] The position of the Centre Party, the third largest party in the Reichstag, turned out to be decisive. After Hitler verbally promised party leader Ludwig Kaas that President von Hindenburg would retain his power of veto, Kaas announced the Centre Party would support the Enabling Act. Ultimately, the Enabling Act passed by a vote of 441–84, with all parties except the Social Democrats voting in favour. The Enabling Act, along with the Reichstag Fire Decree, transformed Hitler's government into a de facto legal dictatorship.^[154]

                              

G 8 Summit Ends with unclear consensus .

                           Growth   and   Austerity  can   not   be   balanced   in   concurrence  .   It  should  be   happened  only   in   one   stops      and   one   goes     . 
   WHITE HOUSE - U.S. President Barack Obama says the leaders of the world’s biggest economies are beginning to agree that more jobs and more growth will help reverse Europe’s economic crisis.  The president spoke Saturday at the end of the Group of Eight economic summit.

 After two days of talks at the Camp David presidential retreat outside Washington, Obama said the eight leaders acknowledge that budget cuts alone will not restore Europe’s economy.

“And there is now an emerging consensus that more must be done to promote growth and job creation right now, in the context of these fiscal and structural reforms,” the president said.

A statement from the G8 leaders called for a balance between growth and austerity to fight the economic woes.

Obama said the leaders discussed the need for the troubled European countries to continue shrinking their deficits while stimulating economic growth.

“Today we agreed that we must take steps to boost confidence and to promote growth and demand while getting our fiscal houses in order," he said. "We agreed upon the importance of a strong and cohesive Eurozone, and affirmed our interest in Greece staying in the Eurozone while respecting its commitments.”

Political impact

The decisions the leaders make could have political consequences.

The main advocate of European austerity, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, recently saw her party defeated in a local election.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who also favored budget cuts, was voted out of office, in favor of Francois Hollande, who offered a pro-growth policy.

Many U.S. political analysts say a stagnant economy, blamed partly on Europe’s economic woes, is the biggest obstacle to Obama’s re-election in November.

“The leaders here understand the stakes," Obama noted.  "They know the magnitude of the choices they have to make, and the enormous political, economic and social costs if they do not.”

Dr. Robert L. Spitze and Gay Cure .

                             

Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, considered by some to be the father of modern psychiatry, lay awake at 4 o’clock on a recent morning knowing he had to do the one thing that comes least naturally to him.

He pushed himself up and staggered into the dark. His desk seemed impossibly far away; Dr. Spitzer, who turns 80 next week, suffers from Parkinson’s disease and has trouble walking, sitting, even holding his head upright.

The word he sometimes uses to describe these limitations — pathetic — is the same one that for decades he wielded like an ax to strike down dumb ideas, empty theorizing and junk studies.

Now here he was at his computer, ready to recant a study he had done himself, a poorly conceived 2003 investigation that supported the use of so-called reparative therapy to “cure” homosexuality for people strongly motivated to change.

What to say? The issue of gay marriage was rocking national politics yet again. The California State Legislature was debating a bill to ban the therapy outright as being dangerous. A magazine writer who had been through the therapy as a teenager recently visited his house, to explain how miserably disorienting the experience was.

And he would later learn that a World Health Organization report, released on Thursday, calls the therapy “a serious threat to the health and well-being — even the lives — of affected people.”

Dr. Spitzer’s fingers jerked over the keys, unreliably, as if choking on the words. And then it was done: a short letter to be published this month, in the same journal where the original study appeared.

“I believe,” it concludes, “I owe the gay community an apology.”

Disturber of the Peace

The idea to study reparative therapy at all was pure Spitzer, say those who know him, an effort to stick a finger in the eye of an orthodoxy that he himself had helped establish.

In the late 1990s as today, the psychiatric establishment considered the therapy to be a nonstarter. Few therapists thought of homosexuality as a disorder.

It was not always so. Up into the 1970s, the field’s diagnostic manual classified homosexuality as an illness, calling it a “sociopathic personality disturbance.” Many therapists offered treatment, including Freudian analysts who dominated the field at the time.

Advocates for gay people objected furiously, and in 1970, one year after the landmark Stonewall protests to stop police raids at a New York bar, a team of gay rights protesters heckled a meeting of behavioral therapists in New York to discuss the topic. The meeting broke up, but not before a young Columbia University professor sat down with the protesters to hear their case.

“I’ve always been drawn to controversy, and what I was hearing made sense,” said Dr. Spitzer, in an interview at his Princeton home last week. “And I began to think, well, if it is a mental disorder, then what makes it one?”

He compared homosexuality with other conditions defined as disorders, like depression and alcohol dependence, and saw immediately that the latter caused marked distress or impairment, while homosexuality often did not.

He also saw an opportunity to do something about it. Dr. Spitzer was then a junior member of on an American Psychiatric Association committee helping to rewrite the field’s diagnostic manual, and he promptly organized a symposium to discuss the place of homosexuality.

That kicked off a series of bitter debates, pitting Dr. Spitzer against a pair of influential senior psychiatrists who would not budge. In the end, the psychiatric association in 1973 sided with Dr. Spitzer, deciding to drop homosexuality from its manual and replace it with his alternative, “sexual orientation disturbance,” to identify people whose sexual orientation, gay or straight, caused them distress.

The arcane language notwithstanding, homosexuality was no longer a “disorder.” Dr. Spitzer achieved a civil rights breakthrough in record time.

“I wouldn’t say that Robert Spitzer became a household name among the broader gay movement, but the declassification of homosexuality was widely celebrated as a victory,” said Ronald Bayer of the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia. “ ‘Sick No More’ was a headline in some gay newspapers.”

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Next Page

A lecture from Tsai Ing-wen , the former D.P.P Chairwoman .

                      The  Bargaining  Chips,   Methods   use    to  persude  someone  or  party  .  
                        

Methods used to persuade someone

pressure

noun

attempts to persuade, threaten, or force someone to do something

wiles

noun

ways of persuading or tricking someone so that they do what you want

emotional blackmail

noun

a method of trying to persuade someone to do something by making them feel guilty

pitch

noun

the things that you say to persuade someone to buy something or to support you

dare

noun

an attempt to persuade someone to do something dangerous in order to prove that they are brave

sweetener

noun

something that you offer someone in order to persuade them to do something

shock tactics

noun

the use of shocking images or descriptions to force people to think about something or to do something

bait

noun

something that is offered in order to persuade someone to do something or buy something

blandishments

noun

pleasant things you do or say about someone in order to persuade or influence them

hard sell

noun

a situation in which you have difficulty selling something or persuading someone to change their opinion about an idea

          

The Head of Syria's Main opposition offered to resign.

      It  is   either   a   good   news   for   Syria  or   The   U.N   .   Troops.  
                
Mr. Assad this week appeared to belittle the SNC in his first television interview since December. "I don't think that they have any kind of weight or significance within Syria," he told a Russian state television channel, the Associated Press reported.
Meanwhile, hundreds of students protested at Aleppo University in the presence of U.N. observers who are in Syria to monitor the terms of the April 12 cease-fire. That came two weeks after an on-campus raid by security forces left four students dead and shut the university.
On Thursday, some activists said pro-regime students and regime forces attacked demonstrators, but it wasn't clear whether the monitors witnessed the fight.
Mr. Ghalioun, a 67-year-old Paris-based academic, offered to resign after one of the earliest and broadest grassroots activist networks in the uprising, the Local Coordination Committees, threatened to pull out of the coalition.

European Pressphoto Agency

Burhan Ghalioun offered to step down as head of the opposition.

That threat signals a widening divide between the opposition's exiled leadership abroad, led by the SNC in Istanbul, and activists leading protests inside Syria, many who feel they are facing the brunt of the risk.
Many activists say the council has lost touch with the uprising on the ground, failed to meet protester pleas for humanitarian aid or arms and only in vain lobbied foreign governments for help to stem the bloodshed.
"The SNC doesn't mean anything to me," a 33-year-old protester in Damascus, Syria's capital, said by Skype. "They don't own this revolution. If they can help us get to the end, fine. If not, we'll get there anyway."
Some allege an outsize role for one of the SNC's seven main political factions, the Muslim Brotherhood, whose backing for the secular and liberal Mr. Ghalioun has helped cement his leadership but has alienated other secular factions.
Samir Nachar, a member of the council's top leadership committee, said the council now faced "a real crisis." Members met on Skype on Thursday evening to plan their next moves, he said.
Molham al-Droubi, a Brotherhood member on the council, said the group would have to restructure to become more inclusive to other opposition coalitions and recruit qualified technocrats from outside the council "who can do the job."
"If this happens, we will save the SNC," Mr. Droubi said by telephone. "Otherwise, I think the SNC will no longer exist."
He said the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood was aware of allegations it was monopolizing decision-making in the council, which he acknowledged but said was due to it superior organizational abilities. Brotherhood members had reached out to other opposition members and Western diplomats to address these concerns, he said.
A 10-member panel appointed in April to restructure the SNC's leadership bodies and broaden the council failed to do so amid disagreements, panel members said.
But other activists warn that the bickering in the opposition is setting back efforts to form a united front against Mr. Assad, allowing him to defy the cease-fire.
On Tuesday, Mr. Ghalioun's competitor in elections was George Sabra, a Christian whose candidacy was backed by another longtime opposition group called the Damascus Declaration.
Analysts and some activists say a council under Mr. Sabra would send an important message to Syria's religious minorities in an uprising that has pitted the majority-Sunni protest movement—a reflection of Syria's Sunni-majority population—against a regime dominated by Alawites, an offshoote Muslim sect associated with Shiism.
  .  

Homosexuality and Psychology .

Psychology was one of the first disciplines to study homosexuality as a discrete phenomenon. Prior to and throughout most of the 20th century, common standard psychology viewed homosexuality in terms of pathological models as a mental illness. That classification began to be subjected to critical scrutiny in the research, which consistently failed to produce any empirical or scientific basis for regarding homosexuality as a disorder or abnormality. As a result of such accumulated research, professionals in medicine, mental health, and the behavioral and social sciences, opposing the classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder, claimed the conclusion that it was inaccurate, and that the DSM classification reflected untested assumptions that were based on once-prevalent social norms and clinical impressions from unrepresentative samples which consisted of patients seeking therapy and individuals whose conduct brought them into the criminal justice system.^[1]
Since the 1970s, the consensus of the behavioral and social sciences and the health and mental health professions globally is that homosexuality is a normal variation of human sexual orientation, while there remain those who maintain that it is a disorder.^[2] In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder. The American Psychological Association Council of Representatives followed in 1975.^[3] Consequently, while some still believe homosexuality is a mental disorder, the current research and clinical literature demonstrate that same-sex sexual and romantic attractions, feelings, and behaviors are normal and positive variations of human sexuality, reflecting the official positions of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association.

How about the R.O.C 's Labour Law and Labour Union Law !

International  community   enforcement  is   so  poor  .  

Birth of the international labour law

The first moves toward international labour conventions date back to the beginning of the 19th century. Robert Owen in England, J.A. Blanqui and Villerme in France, and Ducepetiaux in Belgium are considered precursors to the idea of international regulation of labour matters. However, David Legrand, an industrialist from Alsace, put forward this idea most systematically, defending it and developing it in repeated appeals addressed to the governments of the main European countries from 1840 to 1855.
In the second half of the 19th century, the idea was first taken up by private associations. Thereafter, a number of proposals to promote international regulation of labour matters were made in the French and German parliaments. The first official initiative came from Switzerland – where, following proposals made in 1876 and 1881 and in consultation with other European countries, the Swiss government suggested convening a Conference on the matter in Bern in May 1890.
The establishment of an International Association for the Legal Protection of Workers, the seat of which was in Basle, was followed by a congress held in Brussels in 1897. The activity of this private organization led the Swiss government to convene international conferences in 1905 and 1906 in Bern, where the first two international labour conventions were adopted. One of these related to the prohibition of night work for women in industrial employment, and the other to the prohibition of the use of white phosphorus in the manufacture of matches.
During World War I, the trade union organizations of both sides, as well as those of neutral countries, insisted that their voice be heard at the time of the settlement of peace, and that the peace treaties contain clauses for improving the condition of workers. The peace conference entrusted the examination of this question to a special commission known as the Commission on International Labour Legislation. The work of the Commission led to the inclusion in the Treaty of Versailles and the other peace treaties of Part XIII, which dealt with labour matters. This section of the treaties provided for the establishment of an International Labour Organization, which might adopt conventions and recommendations in this field. Conventions would be binding only on those states which ratified them. (See Constitution of the International Labour Organization, adopted by the Peace Conference in April of 1919)
In October 1919, the International Labour Conference met in Washington to adopt the first Conventions and to appoint the Governing Body. Since then, the International Labour Conference has met regularly in general once a year, except during the Second World War.
At the end of the Second World War, the International Labour Conference adopted in May 1944, in Philadelphia, a Declaration (Philadelphia Declaration), which defined again the aims and purposes of the Organization. This Declaration reaffirmed in particular,

• that labour is not a commodity,
• that freedom of expression and of association are essential to sustained progress,
• that poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere and
• that the war against want requires to be carried on with unrelenting vigour within each nation, and by continuous and concerted international effort in which the representatives of workers and employers, enjoying equal status with those of governments, join them in free discussion and democratic decision with a view to the promotion of the common welfare.

The Declaration affirmed that all human beings, irrespective of race, creed or sex, have the right to pursue both their material well-being and their spiritual development in conditions of freedom and dignity, of economic security and equal opportunity. It also referred to the social aspect of economic and financial measures.
The Declaration then defined a number of specific objectives of the ILO, such as

• full employment and the raising of living standards,
• facilities of training policies in regard to wages, hours of work and other conditions of work calculated to ensure a just share of the fruits of progress to all,
• the effective recognition of the right of collective bargaining,
• the co-operation of management and labour in the continuous improvement of productive efficiency, and
• the collaboration of workers and employer in the preparation and application of social and economic measures, the extension of social security measures to provide a basic income to all in need of such protection, and comprehensive medical care, etc.

Apart from the ILO standards, an increasing number of bilateral and regional agreements have been concluded in the field of labour.
The general trend of agreements has been the constant broadening of their scope, both as regards the fields covered, the categories of persons protected and the framework within which the matters are treated. Thus a number of these instruments go beyond the traditional field of labour law and touch upon matters of civil liberties and penal law, of property law etc.

Main source of this section has been International Encyclopaedia for Labour Law and Industrial Relations, Supplement 163

Teritorial Disputes in the South China Sea .

                                        

[edit] Events

[edit] Taiwan

In 1939, Japan invaded and occupied the South China Sea islands. 1946 according to the "spirit of the Cairo Declaration and Potsdam Proclamation, China Ministry of the Interior in conjunction with the Department of the Navy and the Guangdong provincial government to appoint Xiao Yin and Mak Yun Yu, Commissioner for The Spratly and Paracel archipelago, went to take over The Spratly and Paracel archipelago, build up the sovereignty of the monuments.
In 1952 according to "Treaty of Peace with Japan", the Spratly and Paracel archipelagobe were returned to China
In 1956, Taiwan's navy has dispatched the prestige fleet, the Weiyuan fleet and the Ning fleet to patrol the Spratly Islands.Cruise process, in the Pacific Island, South Island, West Tsukishima heavy tree monument, held a flag raising ceremony, and adapted for the "Nansha garrison" reassignment Marines to protect Pacific Island
In 1975, the Taiwan authorities claim the only legitimate sovereign of the Spratly. For the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, successively seized the Spratly Islands.
January 28, 2000, the establishment of the Coast Guard Administration to take over the Pacific Island

[edit] Vietnam

1956-1971, South Vietnam occupy the The Spratly Islands, and issued a declaration of sovereignty over the The Spratly; 1958,September 14, the North Vietnamese Premier Pham Van Dong sent Premier Zhou Enlai in a formal diplomatic correspondence. In this correspondence, recognized that The Spratly and Paracel archipelago have been China's territory since ancient times. The government official letter written on the Vietnamese Government fully agree with the Declaration and its Annexes of the Chinese Government on the 12-mile on February 14, 1975, new Vietnam claimeded that "sovereignty" on The Spratly and Paracel archipelago

[edit] China

In 1974, the outbreak of the Paracel Islands naval battle with Vietnam (South Vietnam), retaking the Paracel Islands was placed under the jurisdiction of Hainan.
In the 1988 Johnson South Reef Skirmish with Vietnam, China took back seven the Spratly Islands.
In 1997, China reaffirmed the U-shaped area in the South China Sea as Chinese territorial waters and Chinese sovereignty over of all reefs within the area.

[edit] 2005

Chinese ships fired upon two Vietnamese fishing boats from Thanh Hoa province, killing 9 people and detaining one ship.^[16]

[edit] 2009

• In March 2009: The Pentagon reported that Chinese ships harassed a U.S. surveillance ship. According to the report, five Chinese vessels "shadowed and aggressively maneuvered in dangerously close proximity to USNS Impeccable, in an apparent coordinated effort to harass the U.S. ocean surveillance ship while it was conducting routine operations in international waters.” The crew members aboard the vessels, two of which were within 50 feet, waved Chinese flags and told the U.S. ship to leave the area, the statement said. ^[17]

[edit] 2011

• 26 May: The clash involved the Vietnamese Binh Minh 02 oil and gas survey ship and three Chinese maritime patrol vessels occurred 120km (80 miles) off the south-central coast of Vietnam and some 600km south of China's Hainan island. Vietnam says the Chinese boats deliberately cut the survey ship's cables in Vietnamese waters. China denies the allegation.^[18] The event stirred up unprecedented anti-China protests in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city.^[19]

• On June 9th, 2011, a Norwegian-flagged seismic conducting ship hired by Vietnam Oil & Gas Corporation (PetroVietnam) clashed with another three Chinese fishery patrol vessels within Vietnam’s Exclusive Economic Zone. Vietnam once again claimed its exploration cables were deliberately cut. [1]

“	“China’s systematic action is aimed at turning the undisputed area belonging to Vietnam into an area under dispute in order to materialize China’s nine-dotted line claim in the East Sea. This is unacceptable”	”
—Vietnamese spokeswoman Pham Phuong Nga, following the June 9th incident

[edit] 2012

• In April 2012, the Philippine warship Gregorio del Pilar was involved in a standoff with two Chinese surveillance vessels in the Scarborough Shoal, an area claimed by both nations^[20]. The Philippine navy had been trying to arrest a group of Chinese fisherman, but the surveillance boats prevented them. On April 14, 2012, U.S. and the Philippines held their yearly war games in Palawan, Philippines. The games involved 4,500 US personnel and 2,300 Filipino troops. "Our aim is not against any country, our aim is to protect maritime security and to protect the interests of our country," said Major Emmanuel Garcia, Philippine military spokesman for the games. ^[21]

• On April 16, 2012, the Chinese Foreign Ministry urged a Philippine archaeological ship to immediately leave the waters of the Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island), which China claims is an "integral part of its territory"^[22].

• On May 7 2012, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Fu Ying called a meeting with Alex Chua, Charge D'affaires of the Philippine Embassy in China, to make a serious representation over the current incident at the Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island), telling him that China has "made all preparations to respond to any escalation of the situation by the Philippine side"^[23]. China also warned its nationals against travel to the Philippines and raised trade barriers on imported pineapples and bananas^[24].

KUHNER: Obama's homosexual America - Washington Times

KUHNER: Obama's homosexual America - Washington Times
          
 .  

Putin won't attend G-8 meeting - Washington Times

Putin won't attend G-8 meeting - Washington Times

Some Quates of Albert Einstein.

• Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.
  • Letter to his son Eduard (5 February 1930), as quoted in Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007), p. 367

• I believe that whatever we do or live for has its causality; it is good, however, that we cannot see through to it.
  • Interview with Rabindranath Tagore (14 April 1930), published in The Religion of Man (1930) by Rabindranath Tagore, p. 222, and in The Tagore Reader (1971) edited by Amiya Chakravarty

• The really good music, whether of the East or of the West, cannot be analyzed.
  • Interview with Rabindranath Tagore (14 April 1930), published in The Religion of Man (1930) by Rabindranath Tagore, p. 222, and in The Tagore Reader (1971) edited by Amiya Chakravarty

• To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself.
  • Aphorism for a friend (18 September 1930) [Einstein Archive 36-598]; as quoted in Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel (1988) by Banesh Hoffman

• I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
  • Attributed in The Encarta Book of Quotations to an interview on the Belgenland (December 1930), which was the ship on which he arrived in New York that month. According to The Ultimate Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (2010), p. 18, the quote also appears as "Aphorism, 1945-1946" in the Einstein Archives 36-570. Calaprice speculates that "perhaps it was recalled later and inserted into the archives under the later date." According to a snippet on google books, the phrase '"I never think of the future," he said. "It comes soon enough."' appears in The Literary Digest: Volume 107 on p. 29, in an article titled "We May Not 'Get' Relativity, But We Like Einstein" from 27 December 1930. The snippet also discusses the "welcome to Professor Einstein on the Belgenland" in New York.

• Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. You cannot subjugate a nation forcibly unless you wipe out every man, woman, and child. Unless you wish to use such drastic measures, you must find a way of settling your disputes without resort to arms.
  • From a speech to the New History Society (14 December 1930), reprinted in "Militant Pacifism" in Cosmic Religion (1931). Also found in The New Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice, p. 158.

• It is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.
  • From a letter to Harmann Huth, 27 December 1930. Supposedly published in German magazine Vegetarische Warte, which existed from 1882 to 1935. Einstein Archive 46-756. Quoted in The New Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (2005), p. 281