USA

Harlem Town Hall Meeting, Wed 01 Sep, 2007:

Discuss Civil Rights & Housing Discrimination at a Town Hall Meeting. Remind your elected officials that it's in their best interest to protect the housing of their voting constituents. While you're at it, register a few of the people there to vote.

Event is located at the Adam Clayton Powell State Office Building, 163 W. 125th St, 8th Floor.

Sponsors:

Kumiki Gibson, Commissioner, New York State Division of Human Rights
Bill Perkins, Senator, 30th Senatorial District

RSVP by Phone: 212 222 7315

If you support the ongoing occupation of Iraq, I'm sure you have your reasons and that they're based in hard scientific calculations. But please indulge me for a moment and help me do this little math problem:

All the benefits we've gotten out of invading and occupying Iraq (whatever they may be)…

Actually, let me stop right there. The benefits you have in mind for this calculation should not include the increased price of gas, the killed and wounded U.S. servicemen and women, or the creation of a breeding ground for terrorists in Iraq (that the invasion and occupation of Iraq have made us less safe is the consensus opinion of U.S. intelligence agencies, supported as well by a conservative British think tank). Oh, and please don't factor in the Iraqis' gratitude, since the majority of them believe the invasion and occupation have made them worse off, and they want the U.S. to leave.

As I was saying, all the benefits we've gotten out of invading and occupying Iraq (whatever in the world they may be) have come at a certain financial cost. U.S. taxpayers have shelled out $450 billion thus far. The Congressional Budget Office expects costs to end up over a trillion. And those calculations do not include the costs of providing health care for veterans and rebuilding the military, or the effects on the economy of removing workers to make them soldiers, of increasing the price of oil, of failing to spend the war money on domestic projects (such as infrastructure), etc. Columbia University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes estimate a total cost of at least $2 trillion.

Once upon a time there was a high school. It was a beautiful high school, and rich in history, being more than 200 years old, and everybody in town wanted to attend it.

With its fine roots in liberal education and the almost unprecedented power over their own destinies that it bestowed upon its students, it was unlike any other high school in the district, or indeed, the state. At the turn of the last century, whole families, many of them Irish and Eastern European, moved across town so that they'd be zoned for it. The high school welcomed them with open arms, but the students weren’t so kind.

It is my sad duty to report that many of these new students were beaten up, or had their lockers vandalized. Thankfully, things settled down, and the high school was once again a harmonious whole.

In the 40s, there was a shameless and dangerous power grab by a school superintendent a few districts over. He was intent upon eventually absorbing every school in the state into his district, under his control, and decreeing with a wave of his hand who could stay and who could not.

Fortunately, the president of the student body, a well-liked disabled guy named Frank, worked tirelessly with the other schools until the superintendent was voted safely out of office.

But our story begins about fifteen years ago with the election of a Jock to Student Body President.

The Jock was a nice guy, everybody liked him, and there was no denying that he had charm. He was a great guy to grab a burger with, and, whoever you were, you felt like the Jock knew where you were coming from. At this time - actually, to this day - the Jock was going steady with someone who defied high school logic.

Has Socialism been Forgotten?

“There can be no doubt that most socialists here still believe profoundly in the liberal idea of freedom and that they would recoil if they became convinced that the realization of their program would mean the destruction of freedom.” (The Road to Serfdom , Friedrich Hayek)

In 1944, Professor Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, is said to have been one of the main scholarly works to refute the basic tenets of socialism and put classical liberal economics back on the map of many academics and politicians in the West. Today socialism has widely died down and few experiments with it are still ongoing. As the world globalizes, the predominant form of economics, liberalism, overtakes the globe with fierce rapidity risking to leave most of its people, who do not profit from such abrasive capitalism, in destitute conditions. This blog addresses some of the moral issues at hand and makes a recommendation.

It has been said that as purchasing power parity climbs, so does freedom. In this sense, freedom seems to be elastic. Elastic in the sense that one can work 5 extra hours a day to earn more freedom or take a stock-market gamble hoping to receive a big freedom payoff. It has been said that if a cap is put on one’s earning powers or if one is forbidden to engage in market competition, one is imprisoned by the “despotism of physical want” . From this perspective, the restraint becomes apparent and the whole system of socialism is invalidated on moral grounds – it limits freedom as most of humanity currently sees it.

A poll conducted by BBC in 27 countries shows that Bush's idea of an "Axis of Evil" may get some international support. Problem is, according to world opinion, the US is part of that Axis of Evil...or perhaps Axis of Destabilization:

According to a poll made for the BBC, carried out in 27 countries, 56% of those interviewed see in Israel, the United States, Iran and North Korea, "the countries with the most harmful influence on the world". (Guysen.Isra×›l.News)

Checking out the BBC website, shows that Israel, Iran and the US are viewed as having a "mostly negative influence" on the world by more than 50% of people polled. North Korea does slightly better with 48% of people polled seeing them as having a "mostly negative influence." So the US is slightly better than Iran and slightly worse than North Korea in its influence on the world, it seems. Great job, Bush! The world, which loved us under Clinton/Gore now see us as about as much a threat to the world as Iran and North Korea thanks to Bush/Cheney.

Looking at it from the other end, Canada, EU collectively, and Japan top the list as having a "mostly positive influence" according to more than half of people taking the poll. It is interesting that Japan does so well given how much China, Taiwan and the Koreas hate them. Isreal's low rating is not surprising given their unpopularity in the Muslim world and the negative view of their war with Lebanon.

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a national nonprofit organization established in 1967, has helped forge a cross-sector alliance between corporate and environmental leaders, with the intent to achieve economically viable reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

The group, the United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), is thus far composed of 10 dominant corporations and 6 leading environmental groups, including such big names as Alcoa, General Electric, and DuPont, as well as EDF and the National Resources Defense Council.

The alliance's proposal, "A Call For Action" [pdf], requests immediate federal government limits on greenhouse gas emissions and the creation of market-based incentives to achieve those limits. There is a clear need for such cap-and-trade requirements to be mandatory, so that early adopters will be rewarded by being able to stay competitive in relevant markets.

USCAP motivates its incentives with the NAS survey result:

In June 2005, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences joined with the scientific academies of ten other countries in stating that "the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt actions."

The organization Reporters Without Borders has come up with its 2005 rankings of nations based on freedom of the press.

Our Founding Fathers would not be pleased.

At the top of the list are Finland, Iceland, Ireland and the Netherlands, all tying for #1 in Freedom of the Press. I am surprised by Ireland, I have to admit, though for no particular reason that I can think of. Finland, Iceland and the Netherlands are no suprise whatsoever.

What fascinates me are the others in the top 10. Norway and Switzerland are up there, no big surprise, as is Portugal. But the biggest surprise among the top ten are the number of former Soviet Bloc nations: Czech Republic, Estonia, Slovakia, Hungary, Latvia (one of my ancestral homes!), and Slovenia. Bravo to these nations for coming so far so fast. Russia itself does not fare so well, coming in 147, right above Yemen, the Gambia and Tunisia and below, get this, the "Democratic Republic" of the Congo and Somalia! Coming on the same day I read about the vandalism of a synagogue in Vladavastok, coming on the heals of a skinhead gathering, I can't help but think Russia is slowly failing in its experiments with democracy.

The bottom of the list is no surprise at all: China, Burma (sic), Cuba, Eritrea, Turkmenistan, and, rock bottom, North Korea at 168. I almost think North Korea has turned every possible measure of failure into a goal: starvation of its population, cult worship of living people, absolute censorship of pretty much everything. "Burma" (now actually called Myanmar) and Turkmenistan are about the shittiest nations (in terms of human rights) we actually have friendly dealings with, and our close friendship with these two nations pretty much belies any claim we have to advancing democracy. Sure, we condemn Cuba and North Korea, but Myanmar, Turmkenistan and, in terms of trade, China are among our best buddies.

It knows no party boundaries.
It is not caused by alcoholism.
That is all.
Go back to FOX News.