I enjoy updating this web site, but due to other concerns the next new post will be in August. That is, unless something really big happens in the news.
I recommend the sites on the left for their uncommon insights, tenacious opinions, and artful writing.
Today is Earth Day. (*) If you want to do one thing for the environment, and aren’t yet registered to vote, then the first thing you should do is get registered. (†) Every vote matters, as we learned in 2000. Only 559 days to go until the next Presidential election. Remember to vote. Always.
One of the great problems of today for the human race is the mass extinction of species. (‡) Millions of species and one-quarter of all mammals stand at the chopping block thanks to humanity’s rapacious appetite for resources. The long-term danger is, of course, that as the planet enjoys less and less biodiversity, it will become less livable and hospitable, even for human beings.
The latest Rachel’s Weekly carries a report by Bette Hileman of the American Chemical Society. She reports that cancer in US children has increased at a rate of 1% per year since the early 1970s. Other serious pediatric conditions, such as asthma, are also on the rise. (§) Many of these problems are attributable to the prevalence of certain destructive chemicals in the environment. Meanwhile, the American Chemical Council plans to spend $50 million to refurbish the chemical industry’s public image.
A recent study finds that the US government’s threshold for lead levels in children is still too high. Even exposure to a tiny amount of lead can harm a child, and even do permanent damage. (**)
President George W. Bush’s track record on environmental issues is atrocious. The Sierra Club offers the Big Book of Bush, full of entertaining tidbits on Bush’s misguided environmental policies. (††)
Happy Earth Day, everybody.
Update: 23 April 2003. It’s nice to see a puncturing of the Bush Administration’s environmental doublespeak. (‡‡)
Some of the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) pushed by Monsanto, including Roundup Ready grain products, are facing stronger and stronger resistance by farmers, especially in North Dakota. (*) The problem is that Monsanto’s genetically modified wheat, for example, might spread and contaminate natural wheat. Then, if foreign buyers continue to reject genetically modified food products, farmers could be unable to sell either modified wheat or natural wheat except at a reduced price. The worry is that the price reduction would be large.
Note that Monsanto’s business health is not directly tied to the health of farms. If farming operations suffer, other, larger corporate-owned operations will take up the slack. Therefore, farmers are wise to be a little suspicious about Monsanto’s new products like its Roundup Ready line.
Update: 9 April 2004. Linked by Patently Obvious (†) who has more information.
The nettlesome Paul Krugman points out that President Bush’s proposed $726 billion tax cut, which Bush claims would create 1.4 million jobs, would cost the government $500,000 per job, each of which would pay an American worker an average of $40,000. (*)
It would be cheaper to just hire people into a public works program, or just send people checks for doing nothing. So where would the rest of the tax cut go? As Bush prepares to cut education, assistance to the poor, and infrastructure to pay for the tax cuts, the rich prepare to line their pocketbooks, laughing all the way to the bank.
Update: 23 April 2003. Donald Luskin says Paul Krugman is wrong, wrong, wrong. (†) He is joined by Just One Minute (‡) and Lynxx Pherrett, in comments. There are two complaints.
Initially, they say, the $726 billion tax cut is spread over several years, while the 1.4 million new jobs figure, from the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors (CEA), is only through 2004. Luskin notes that if you assume that job growth after 2004 as a result of the plan is 500,000 per year, the plan looks much better. Nevertheless, in the CEA report, they estimate that after 2004, annual job growth as a result of the plan will be less than 200,000, though they do not account for the full effect of the tax cut. (§ PDF)
On average over end-2002 to end-2007, job creation as a result of the package would be 140,000 higher than otherwise. This indicates that the proposal would bring forward a good deal of the job creation that would otherwise have occurred in 2005 and beyond (and add some as well). As noted above, the statistical model used for the projections does not include any supplyside effects under which lower tax rates would be expected to boost labor supply and further improve job creation. Corporate income tax relief would likewise be expected to lead to positive supply-side effects through improved allocation of capital across the economy and thus higher growth and job creation—again, however, this is not reflected in the numerical projections.
(** previously cited) The CEA estimates that about the tax cut will increase GDP growth by 0.2% per year through 2007, and will create only about 170,000 new jobs per year through 2007. As Luskin notes, the tax cut is front loaded. Most of the benefit in jobs will occur early on. As time passes, the effect will wear off significantly. Because this report does not and perhaps cannot account for long-term changes in the ability of the economy to grow, it is not complete. Nevertheless, it remains striking that Bush is willing to settle for only 1.4 million new jobs from now until 2007, and at such a steep price. President Clinton helped create no fewer than 20 million new jobs in his term in office. I hope that whatever plan is enacted does create at least 1.4 million new jobs, as that will offset the 1.4 million jobs lost since President Bush’s last tax cut. (††)
Luskin also cites his friend Reuven Brenner who believes that Krugman’s comparison is inapt as it compares a flow (new jobs) with a stock (tax cut). (‡‡) Of course, though, the tax cut will be permanent, and thus, like a job, will be a flow, and not a stock. To be completely accurate, both Krugman and the CEA should be using present values.
In all, Krugman’s estimations are crude, but so are the CEA’s. I wonder if we couldn’t get a similar boost to jobs with a tax cut of a mere $350 billion or smaller.
Does the United States or any another country have the right to invade a country like Cuba or Myanmar purely for the sake of protecting human rights? Should a tyrannical nation-state ever lose its sovereignty because of its tyrannical nature? These are key questions of the day. To answer them, the Canadian government commissioned a report, released in December of 2001. This report, the Responsibility to Protect has only increased in importance over time. (*)
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An epidemic of obesity is affecting not just America, but the entire globe. (*) About 1.7 billion people suffer from obesity. The condition causes diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and cancer. Annually, the condition causes more than 2.5 million deaths, including over 300,000 in each of the United States and Europe.
Michael Fumento (†) (‡) and Gary Taubes (§) have a sharp disagreement over low carbohydrate diets, said to help in achieving weight loss, in Reason. This is the diet pioneered by Robert Atkins, who died this week of injuries related to a fall on ice. (**)
Without knowing anything about nutritional science, to me the argument that is most compelling is that obesity is caused not just by an imbalance of certain kinds of food—for example, too many carbohydrates and too few proteins—but is caused primarily by the consumption of too many calories of any kind. Simply put, people are eating too much.
The stakes of the debate are indeed higher than just the proper treatment of obesity. Atkins’s research runs counter to the standard food pyramid promoted by the US government, which suggests a high carbohydrate diet. (††) This is not just a scientific argument; it is a deeply cultural issue.
Update: 26 November 2004. The CDC no longer stands by the figure of “400,000″ deaths per year in the US. That was statistically inflated, they say. (‡) New data will be submitted to JAMA.
After this update, I plan to refrain from covering any news about this statistic on this web site.
The British Left, like the American Left, has been divided over the war in Iraq. John Lloyd has resigned his position of columnist with the antiwar New Statesman (*) over the issue. The Guardian excerpts his resignation letter, an excellent, principled statement. (†)
Apparently, John Pilger (‡) has made a statement opposing Lloyd’s, but that one is only available for a fee.
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) (*) is well known to those who have been following the news in the US. CAIR spokesmen are frequently interviewed and quoted in the media. CAIR often speaks up on behalf of the civil rights of Muslims in the US. Some charge, however, that CAIR has ulterior motives, and wishes to spread pro-terrorist propaganda.
CAIR has been severely criticized. Joe Kaufman writes:
This particular group, CAIR, is widely reported as having been the creation of the Texas-based Islamic Association for Palestine or IAP, which is a front for the terrorist group Hamas and an organization that the United States has taken action against in its war on terror. Yet CAIR goes around masquerading as a civil rights organization, as an organization that fights against discrimination.
(†) There have been other, similar criticisms leveled against CAIR. (‡) (§) I’m not aware of whether these allegations are true. I am only noting them here for the sake of looking into them. If there is such a connection, the credibility of CAIR would be nil.
The US officially lists Hamas as a terrorist group. (**)
It would be interesting to know if CAIR has made a statement regarding its relationship, if any to Hamas or IAP. I can’t find any such statement on CAIR’s web site.
Let’s keep an open mind and proceed rationally. We should not assume that CAIR is a front group with connections to terrorists. Let’s develop evidence that shows that it is or is not.
In the Atlantic, Bernard Lewis comes through again, now exploring both the differences and similarities between Christianity and Islam. (*)
This is a joint statement, not authored by me, that will be sent to the Cuban mission to the United Nations and several publications.
We are women and men of the democratic left, united by our commitment to human rights, democratic government and social justice, in our own nations and around the world. In solidarity with the people of Cuba, we condemn the Cuban state’s current repression of independent thinkers and writers, human rights activists and democrats. For “crimes” such as the authorship of essays critical of the government and meeting with delegations of foreign political leaders, some 80 non-violent political dissidents have been arrested, summarily tried in a closed court, without adequate notice or counsel, convicted, and given cruel, harsh sentences of decades of imprisonment. These are violations of the most elementary norms of due process of law, reminiscent of the Moscow trials of the Soviet Union under the rule of Stalin.
The democratic left worldwide has opposed the US embargo on Cuba as counterproductive, more harmful to the interests of the Cuban people than helpful to political democratization. The Cuban state’s current repression of political dissidents amounts to collaboration with the most reactionary elements of the US administration in their efforts to maintain sanctions and to institute even more punitive measures against Cuba.
The only conclusion that we can draw from this brute repression is that Cuban government does not trust the Cuban people to distinguish truth from falsehood, fact from disinformation. A government of the left must have the support of the people: it must guarantee human rights and champion the widest possible democracy, including the right to dissent, as well as promote social justice. By its actions, the Cuban state declares that it is not a government of the left, despite its claims of social progress in education and health care, but just one more dictatorship, concerned with maintaining its monopoly of power above all else.
To add your name to the list, send e-mail to Leo Casey. Current signatures are below.
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The Christians of Egypt are frequently called the Copts. Maged S. Mikhail says that is an unnecessary and misleading descriptor. (*) Copt was not the term that they chose to call themselves historically. The better term is “Christian Egyptians,” as Mikhail argues. The ancient Egyptians of the pharaohs and pyramids converted to Christianity. Several centuries later, Egypt was conquered by the Arabs, and Islam eventually became the dominant religion. Today, the Christian Egyptians are a minority of those living in the Arab-majority Egypt. The ethnic descendants of the ancient Egyptians are alive today as the Egyptian Christians. Their Egyptian language is still spoken and written, though no longer in hieroglyphics. Thus, references to a “Coptic” language are really references to the Egyptian language. The Egyptian Christians of today do refer to themselves as Copts, but should not, as Mikhail argues.
In Egypt today, the members of the Coptic Orthodox Church, or Egyptian Orthodox Church, suffer officially sanctioned and tolerated religious discrimination and other violations of their human rights. (†)
Michael Radu argues vigorously against a Kurdish state, a Kurdistan, Kurdish autononmy within Iraq, and even against a “federal” Iraq. (*) Radu notes that the unity of the Kurdish people is lacking some pieces. There are at least two mutually incomprehensible Kurdish languages, for example. Furthermore, both of the Kurdish autonomous areas in northern Iraq, led by the PUK and the KDP (political parties) have tolerated the presence of approximately 7,000 members of the terrorist, Stalinist group known as the PKK. The PKK has carried out numerous acts of terrorism against Turkey. (†) The Iraq-based terrorist group Ansar al-Islam is primarily Kurdish. Ansar al-Islam was linked to Al Qaeda, and prior to the war was imposing Taliban-like sharia on several villages in Iraq. (‡)
The time is not right for an independent Kurdistan. As for whether Iraq should be a federated state, that is a matter for Iraqis to decide. This onlooker’s opinion is that such a federation should be approached with caution. A “federation” that means a Kurdish region and a separate Arab region in Iraq, as Kurdish groups formerly proposed (§), would be a profoundly unhelpful change. It would be inconducive to the peaceful resolution of disputes between the diverse peoples of Iraq. Provincial boundaries should be politically drawn, not ethnically guided. Furthermore, a federation that allowed the provinces to have their own international relations would not be a federation, but at best a confederation. The foreign policy of Iraq should be the exclusive domain of the central government if the important objective of securing Iraq’s territorial integrity is to be achieved.
Walid Phares has a highly informative article on Christians living in Arab-majority countries. (*) He shatters the myth that all such Christians are Arab in ethnicity. Some are, but most are not.
It would be more accurate to say “Middle East Christians.” I highly recommend the article, as it sheds light not only on its subject but also on the relation between Islam and race. The Arabs were the first ethnicity to adopt Islam widely. As a result, the distinction between Arabs, an ethnicity, and Islam, a religion, has been unnecessarily blurred.
Walid Phares is an interesting figure in the extremely contentious academic field of Middle Eastern studies. In that highly politicized field of study, it is difficult so far to sort out extremists from others. Phares seems interesting, so I’m going to keep reading his work. (†)
T.M.P. Duggan has an excellent article in the archives of the Turkish Daily News that shows how Sunni Muslims categorize religious beliefs.
- The Kafir, or unbeliever: either a polytheist or an atheist.
- The People of the Book: those people who follow a monotheistic religion but are not Muslims; these include the Jews, Christians and Sabeans.
- The Shia: those who follow the descendants of the fourth Caliph of Islam, Ali, often regarding Ali as taking precedence over the Prophet of Islam, and who regard Ali or selected members of Ali’s descendants as infallible Imams and practice dissimulation or Taqiyah. They have split from the majority of the community, Shia meaning a faction rather than the majority, and today they consist of roughly 14 percent of the world’s Muslim population.
- The Sufis: those who are termed the Mystics of Islam and may be more or less orthodox or may, on occasion, follow a compromise among numbers 2, 3 and 5 in practice or in doctrine.
- The Sunni or orthodox majority who follow one of the four schools of Islamic law or Madhha.
(*) The four schools of Islamic jurisprudence range from the conservative to the liberal.
The most liberal of these schools is the Hanifa. In the middle are the Maliki and the Shafi.
The most conservative school, the Hanbali, was the school followed by the theologian Taqi-al din Ahmad ibn Taymiyah. Talmiyah was a major influence on Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al Wahhab, who founded Wahhabism, the doctrine followed by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia today. (†) Wahhabism in turn has had a great deal of influence in the forming of Islamism. (‡) Some Islamist groups have been militant and violent, and others not. One Islamist group is the Muslim Brotherhood, which in turn was instrumental in the creation of Al Qaeda.
Thus, we can see that militant Islamism and Al Qaeda do not represent all Muslims. There have been centuries of disagreement within Islam as to the meaning of the religion. One of Osama Bin Laden’s stated goals is to unite all Muslims. He of course means uniting all Muslims under his banner.
On April 3rd, in an article published in the Washington Post, Reuters reported on a statement made by a Shi’ite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the leading Shi’ite cleric of Iraq. (*) He did not issue a religious edict, or fatwa, but he did call on his followers to remain neutral in the conflict between allied forces and the Iraqi regime. Speaking in Qatar, US General Vincent Brooks said in response, “We believe this is a very significant turning point and another indicator that the Iraqi regime is approaching its end.” An expert on Shi’ites and a professor at Columbia University, Hamid Dabashi was more cautious.
Dabashi said the call could be a tactic, or even a ruse, to protect the sacred sites and the true believers from harm at the hands of the invading armies. Religious law allows Sistani to resort to “taqiyah,” or dissembling for the good of the faith, to achieve those goals.
A fatwa from Sistani, issued earlier while he was under the control of Iraqi government agents, directed the people to resist efforts to topple Saddam.
(† previously cited) What is taqiyah, takiyah, Al-Taqiyah, Al Taqiyah, or al-Taqiyya, as it is variously transliterated from the Arabic?
Its exact translation is not widely agreed upon, but roughly taqiyah is the concealment of belief or faith for a special, higher purpose, such as survival. “And it is to save the life of a believer that one is allowed to utter a lie and save that precious life.” (‡) Questions and answers are available online. (§) In fact, some Shi’ites would say that taqiyah is required of a Muslim to protect himself when his life is in danger. (**) There is debate between Shi’ites on taqiyah. (††) Shi’ites comprise 10–15% of Muslims. The recognition of taqiyah is one of the differences between Shi’ite and Sunni Islam.
Sometimes the claim is made by Shi’ites that other religious systems allow taqiyah. Sunni Muslims have rejected the legitimacy of taqiyah. (‡‡) As for Christians, it is well known that from the earliest days, Christians were not allowed to lie to obscure their faith. The choice of disavowing one’s faith was often given to Christians in the Roman Empire prior to Constantine, and Christians chose to face the lions and gladiators, sealing their earthly death, and allowing them, in their belief, to enter heaven. There has never been a recognition of the legitimacy of taqiyah or anything like it in Christianity that I know of.
In any case, a discussion of the concept of taqiyah is likely to be controversial in nature. Issues and concepts, especially controversial ones, should always be considered in their proper context when discussing them, as I hope I’ve done here.
Update: 5 May 2004. Taqiyah is part of Sunni Islam as well. “Famous Sunni scholar, `Allamah Wahidu ‘z‑zaman Khan of Haydarabad (India) says: “Taqiyah is proved from the Qur’an, “except when you have to guard against them”; and ignorant people think that taqiyah is some?thing peculiar to the Shi’as, while it is allowed in the Sunni faith also at times.”" (§§)
President Bush’s recent manuevers may be preparing the way for radical tax overhaul in what would be his second term. Items on the agenda include eliminating all tax on investment (*), and replacing the income tax with a national sales tax, or consumption tax. (†) (‡)
This year’s Economic Report of the President unflinchingly advances these radical proposals. (§ PDF) For political reasons, however, President Bush will not send actual proposals to Congress until his second term.
The gauntlet is thrown down. Now we liberals and left-of-center folks will have to either fight that much harder against President Bush in 2004 or hone our intellectual case for the battle over tax that will likely occur at some point in the future.
Robert Kagan’s thesis that Americans are from Mars, and Europeans, Venus, is receiving far too much attention. (*) Kagan’s big idea is that Europeans are trying to construct a Kantian world, based on rules, and Americans are acting as if the world is nasty, brutish, and short.
Two quick, decisive criticisms are in order. The first is that this explanation is oversimplifying. If Americans were from Mars, and that explained US foreign policy, then tell me when the invasion of Cuba begins. The second is that Kagan’s notion that neither Americans nor Europeans are acting on the basis of their perceived interests is utter fallacy. Kagan is too much interested in developing a rationale that seems to explain a complex world in a nutshell, and not enough interested in attempting to fully grasp the world’s complexity.
Are physical laws the same in one galaxy as they are in another? The assumption of science is that they are—that laws are universal. In the New York Times, Paul Davies writes of alternative scientific thinking to the effect that our universe is just one of its kind in a multiverse. (*) In every universe, different physical laws would prevail. This would, in Davies’s words, put truth “forever beyond our ken.”
Of course, that is not right. There would likely be rules governing the metaverse itself, and metalaws governing what kind of laws are possible in any universe. If the metaverse conjecture were accurate, we would simply have to seek knowledge of those laws. There is no need to despair. Truth is still within our ken.