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Viewing all posts tagged "politics"
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A clip from last night’s Daily Show, which was amazing.
There’s a reason beind the well-worn statistic that young people get their news from The Daily Show, and it isn’t because they’re too lazy or unsophisticated to get it from a news program without dick jokes.
I’m pretty sure is has to do with the fact that Jon Stewart appears to be the only broadcaster who puts basic reason and logic above anything else.
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”The US is the only major industrialised country that does not provide regular healthcare to all its citizens. Instead, they are required to provide for themselves - and 50 million people can’t afford the insurance. As a result, 18,000 US citizens die every year needlessly, because they can’t access the care they require. That’s equivalent to six 9/11s, every year, year on year.
Really good article from the Independent.
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Excerpt from an email I wrote in 2007
I’m not so hyperbolic to suggest that racism, homophobia, and misogynism drive US foreign policy, but I still maintain that religious and cultural sensibilities are severely lacking in the people who execute said policy. From the interrogators at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib to the Blackwater mercenaries who kill indiscriminately, “bad apples” certainly exist among policy executors.
The most pressing problem, as I see it, is that our policy makers ignore the “bad apples.” More accurately, they ensure that “bad apples” are not prosecutable under US law. The 2006 Military Commission Act places those who serve our national interests by executing our foreign policy into “the legal equivalent of outer space,” as one Administration lawyer put it.
US foreign policy is driven by a set of political goals created and enforced by the head of state. The policy is designed to protect our national interests of security, prosperity, and ideology. We will fail to achieve this unless we change our current track.
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Sure, America cannot afford health care reform right now; but will it ever?
While this is certainly the most reasonable argument for delaying health care reform — we can’t afford it right now — it still misses the point. When in recent memory have we ever “been able to afford it”? The fact is for the past 30 years not one Republican administration has pledged the goal of ensuring that all Americans have good, affordable health care. Rather, the very idea has been associated with death, evil, backwardness, etc. by Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. It surely did not help that Bill Clinton and Obama entered office in the midst of major recessions caused largely by policy decisions made by their respective preceding Republican administrations.
But White House administrations cannot take all the blame. A quick reading of history shows evidence of a trend in public thinking that “we do not want Socialized medicine.” Indeed the American people have gone on record many times as not wanting compulsory health care coverage for all US citizens. Teddy Roosevelt lost the presidential election in 1912 after running on a platform advocating national health insurance. A national health insurance bill put up to the vote by the Truman administration after WWII was rejected by American voters. In the 1980s, in response to escalating heath care costs during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, there was a movement toward consolidating hospital systems and other health care related businesses under corporate control. Yet even into the 1990s as health care costs continued to rise (at double the rate of inflation!), health care reform legislation continued to fail.
It’s clear that the current employer-based system of health insurance cannot last. It’s just not sustainable. But like many things in a country of 300 million people, change cannot happen overnight. Just look how long it took society to accept basic facts that smoking is not healthy, CFCs destroy ozone, CO2 emissions are bad, recycling is good, and clean water is good, before laws were passed to help drive these facts home. There needs to be a shift in public thinking about health care in the US and I will not fault the Obama administration for trying to lead the way.
By the way, we sure would free up a lot of money by reducing military spending (currently around 30% of US tax collections!). In so doing, we could defend the dollar, reduce the projected deficit and finance health care reform simultaneously. -
”Obama is walking a tightrope - the left wants someone more partisan; the right wants someone less him … everyone is unhappy.
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Law & Order
Law:
- Press restrictions, including a ban from producing independent media
- Control over religious discourse by restricting independent mosques
- Harassment of human rights groups
- Prohibition of independent social support
- Military courts for civilians accused of terrorism
- Prohibition of independent counsel
- Illegality of social criticism
Order:
- Expansion of the bureaucracy
- More civil servants on the state’s payroll
- More troops for internal operations
- Greater “public” expenditure in the sense that much more money from the state treasury goes into projects meant ostensibly to help the public, while in reality working to undermine the public
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An introduction to a paper I never wrote
Timur Kuran has written extensively on so-called Islamic economies and political Islam. Just as the “five pillars of Islam” are meant to be followed by every practicing Muslim, the “three pillars of Islamic economy” are meant to be followed by every practicing Muslim system of production, distribution and consumption. The first, behaviour norms with regard to economic decision making, are derived from the holy texts. The second, zakat, the traditional sub-governmental religious tax, is also mandated by the holy texts and is considered by some to be the basis of Islamic fiscal policy. Finally, the traditional-religious prohibition of the charging of interest, Islamic economists would argue, is the centerpiece of Islamic monetary policy.
This trio has been recognized and defended not only by theologians and other non-economists, by also by scholars from a range of social scientific disciplines. This three-pronged blueprint for Islamic economies has “always been there” — what I am concerned with is the extent to which changing economic conditions in the Middle East since the Second World War caused a revival in the literature on Islamic economic theory.
By examining the contextual base of Islamic economic theory, in other words, by focusing on the material wealth and social standing of the literature’s intended audience, I hope to come away with a better understanding of the popularity of this discourse. I hope to see why it has become so common to apply Islamic religious principles to social, political, and economic institutional models. I also hope to gauge the degree that deteriorating economic conditions in parts of the Middle East, coupled with the mass production of economic theory “couched in the language of Islam,” contributed to the attractiveness of political Islam, whether secularist, populist, or militant.
One problem of Islamic economics is determining what exactly constitutes just and correct behaviour. Are this year’s wages Islamically fair given last year’s inflation? Does Islamic economic theory account for the fluid realities of a globally interconnected marketplace? Kuran writes,
The ambiguity inherent in the Islamic norms suggests that the actions one takes may subject one to charges of opportunism by other equally pious individuals who happen to interpret the relevant norms differently.
The obscurity of the norms also suggests that they are susceptible to modification over time.
The problem of ambiguity spans all Islamic social disciplines. It seems that merely attaching the word “Islam” to any institution, whether politics, economics, history, or, indeed, religion, opens it up to innumerable interpretations, each potentially as logical as the next.
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Red lights are for cars, right?
I think that regardless of your stance on the red light issue, all road users — pedestrians, drivers, cyclists — can agree that the flow of traffic can be improved.
While it’s true that experienced cyclists ought to be able to pull away well ahead of accelerating cars, what about inexperienced cyclists who don’t have the burst power or confidence to do so? And while it’s true that inexperienced cyclists might increase their risk by jumping red lights, why not make it optional rather than legislating against the entire cycling community? It’s a difficult problem to crack. There are so many aspects to think about that it’s tough to find a solution which is both acceptable to all road users and — this is important — costs little to nothing to implement on a city-wide scale.
One of the quickest, easiest, cheapest (it’s free) legal measures that can be taken immediately is to allow cyclists to turn left at red lights, provided they give way to all other vehicles or pedestrians who have the right of way. I come from America, where we drive on the right side of the road and it’s legal for cars to turn right on red, provided drivers yield to any entities who have the right of way. From my perspective, it seems odd that, in the UK, where you drive on the left side of the road, cars (and bicycles!) are prohibited from turning left on red.
Part of Boris Johnson’s 2008 mayoral campaign was to allow cyclists to turn left at red lights. Earlier this year, he wrote a letter to the DfT outlining his plan, but he never submitted a formal proposal to change the left-on-red law for cyclist. It’s a shame, really.
In Copenhagen, quite possibly the ideal urban cycling encironment, there are dedicated cyclist traffic lights. A similar solution in London would be too costly to implement, but there’s a cheaper alternative: simply lengthen the phase of the yellow light before it turns green. The new rule would be, “Cyclists treat the yellow light as a green.” As little as 3-5 seconds would make a big difference and ought not to anger even the most impatient drivers. Of course, this solution is not without expense, but it’s way cheaper than
What do you think? Left on red? Longer yellow lights? Would these measures improve the overall flow of road users, without adversely affecting anyone? -
Contemplating the growth of the state
A problem facing many states today is how to shed redundant bureaucratic personnel without overly (or overtly) consolidating the functions of public organizations. In principle, thousands of personnel can be taken off the state payroll without harming the bureaucracy’s effectiveness; its efficiency would surely benefit. But you can’t replace one problem, over-expansion, with another, unemployment! The solution might not be to immediately cut these jobs, but to control the bureaucracy’s expansion over the medium to long term.
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Obama thanks Bush and Clinton for agreeing to raise funds for Haiti relief and rebuilding. (via markknoller)
This photo is crying out for a meme caption contest.
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Dissidents Shift Discussion to Web
Yet another example of how communications technologies are enabling individuals to connect regardless of the physical distance and political barriers which separate them.
A Syrian pro-democracy forum that was shut down by the authorities in 2005 has found a new life in cyberspace and discussion is thriving. The Atassi forum has rallied more than 250 members to its Facebook group to share views on civic issues that are not aired in the state-controlled and state-monitored media. The police state bars intellectuals and dissidents from holding that kind of discussion face to face. Now pro-democracy groups are hoping that social networks like Facebook will help give vigour to their cause and connect opponents inside and outside the country, despite official attempts to block them.
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