Eye on Innovation, Design and Technology

Broadening an Ideological Perspective

Paul Beston, a producer of the NPR program "Bridges" describes how his show, intended to provide the audience with points of view from both sides of the spectrum, ended up significantly influencing his perceptions about conservatives in general and and his ideological beliefs in particular.

It quickly became clear that my understanding of conservatism was a cartoon. The writers took perfectly reasonable positions and argued them with eloquence. Always, there was the sense of limits to what one could hope for — and the warning that taking action could make things worse instead of better. After my years in the fervent environs of the left, the sober skepticism of the conservatives was very appealing. I couldn't help but think that many of my fellow liberals had, like me, assiduously avoided coming in contact with their arguments. That was easy to do in New York City.

None of these squared with my superficial view of the right — on culture, as prudes and scolds who didn't really care for the arts anyway; on history, as blithely indifferent to human suffering; and on communism, as rabid and paranoid.

Hat Tip: Ed Driscoll

Events in Sudan and Syria Getting Attention

The blogosphere and mainstream media are catching up with events in Sudan and Syria. Instapundit has now followed up on the horrors of the war in Sudan that this page documented in a previous post several days ago. Oxblog reports about an article in the Washington Post that declares

The most underreported and encouraging story in the Middle East in the past year has been the emergence in public of homegrown civic movements demanding political change. Two years ago they were nonexistent or in jail. Now they are out in the open even in the most politically backward places in the region: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria.

The demand for democratic reforms in Syria and the rest of the middle east has been a continuing subject of this page. Additional details can be found in the posts below, and the subject of democratic reforms in the middle east is covered here and here

Summit's Collapse Leaves Arab Leaders in Disarray

The cancelation of the Arab summit is causing waves in the Middle East.

The exact reason is a matter of some dispute, but all sides viewed the meeting's collapse — even as some heads of state were on their way — as an embarrassment. It was a stark public admission that the commitment to change voiced by Arab leaders risks becoming just more words.

The Arab League is infamous for its fractious gatherings, but even its most experienced bureaucrats described the cancellation as extraordinary. Some commentators thought the collapse inevitable from the start. The very idea of reform remains too divisive, and many nations' governments have yet to decide how to deal themselves with issues like elections.

In a previous post in this page, we documented the frictions caused by the prospects of democratic reforms in the middle east that the liberation of Iraq is bringing to the forefront.

U.N. Warns About Ocean 'Dead Zones'

The U.N. has issued a warning about the ocean "dead zones"

So-called "dead zones," oxygen-starved areas of the world's oceans that are devoid of fish, top the list of emerging environmental challenges, the United Nations (news - web sites) Environment Program warned Monday in its global overview. The spreading zones have doubled over the last decade and pose as big a threat to fish stocks as overfishing, UNEP said its Global Environment Outlook Year Book 2003, released at the opening of the agency's 8th summit for the world's environment ministers.

Al-Qaeda chief reveals full 9/11 plan

The Herald Sun recently posted a summary of the interrogation of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the so-called mastermind of the 9-11 attacks. While much has been made of the statements that there was a second wave planned targeting the west coast and the Sears tower, am I the only one to notice that in the same text there was evidence that Al Qaeda was responsible for the FIRST world trade center attack in 1993?

We were looking for symbols of economic might," he told his captors. He recounted sitting looking at the books with Ramzi Yusuf, his nephew by marriage, who was the man behind the first World Trade Centre bombing in 1993. In that attack Yusuf succeeded only in ripping a crater into the foundations with a van bomb

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The Meaning of Democracy

Regular readers of this page recall a previous post on how having elections does not mean a county is democratic and posts documenting the difficult transition ocurring in Mexico from a party dictatorship to a nominal democracy. Now Mexdata provides an outstanding description on how the responsibility of citizens can not end at the ballot box.

March events have many analysts and most Mexicans baffled and speechless. Those who are not are asking what is going on?

What is happening is what can happen in any country where hopes are irresponsibly raised, either by politician’s promises or citizen’s who mistake Democracy with a sense of democracy, failing to note that it is not a destination but a journey.

Mexico’s political balkanization is a consequence of partisan political self-indulgence and popular confusion, encouraged by what participants misguidedly perceive as a steady erosion of democracy. After more than 70 years of political famine, Mexicans have found a democratic feast where the road from autocracy to democracy passes by responsibility. They are being awakened to the fact that privileges of a democratic system do not allow voters to surrender their obligations to politicians once their ballots are cast.

With all of its excesses, the corruption coverage had an unexpected positive effect that compelled Mexican society to abandon the ostrich-like outlook on dishonesty and face-up to reality. Analysts hope that a similar consequence may come from the current political disarray, inducing more active citizen participation with political issues and in elections, while strengthening ties with elected representatives and making people realize that they should love their country more than they hate their opponents

Europe's Cold Sweat Over Kyoto

Now that actual implementation of Kyoto's statutes is coming closer, and actual pain might be needed to do so, European economies are having second thoughts

Because despite the change in weather patterns and Europe's green rhetoric, the EU faces a reality check on March 31, the day each member nation must submit a plan for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.

The projected costs, as well as the likely loss of economic competitiveness with the United States, has the EU wondering if it can virtually go it alone in implementing the Kyoto Protocols on climate change. The protocol has yet to take effect as a binding treaty since the US and Russia won't sign on, and China and India were given a pass for now.

In Germany, the EU's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, the government has been in a crisis over details of its plan. Last week at an EU summit, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder asked the body to slow down implementation but was rebuffed by France. All he won was a request for a cost-benefit study on "environmental and competitiveness considerations" in meeting Kyoto's strict targets.

the only issue left over is the insistence that the problem is man made. The question for Kyoto advocates is: How many SUV's have you seen lately running around in Mars?

Scientists have suspected in recent years that Mars might be undergoing some sort of global warming. New data points to the possibility it is emerging from an ice age.

NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter has been surveying the planet for nearly a full Martian year now, and it has spotted seasonal changes like the advance and retreat of polar ice. It's also gathering data of a possible longer trend.

There appears to be too much frozen water at low-latitude regions -- away from the frigid poles -- given the current climate of Mars. The situation is not in equilibrium, said William Feldman of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Layered deposits covering older, cratered surfaces near Mars' south pole dominate this image taken last month. The margin of these layered deposits appears to be eroding poleward, exposing a series of layers in the retreating cliff. It is one piece of a puzzle scientists are putting together on an apparently changing Martian climate.

"One explanation could be that Mars is just coming out of an ice age," Feldman said. "In some low-latitude areas, the ice has already dissipated. In others, that process is slower and hasn't reached an equilibrium yet. Those areas are like the patches of snow you sometimes see persisting in protected spots long after the last snowfall of the winter."

It is Never Wrong to be on the Side of Freedom

V. Hanson's article presents the case that no appeasement will stop Al Qaeda from pursuing its war with the west and that is never wrong to be on the side of freedom.

What is our enemies' ultimate agenda? Judge them by what they say and then do: Any who champion women are targeted. Those who are Jews should die. Expressing tolerance for other religions is a capital crime. Secular law and government are a betrayal. Apostasy from Islam justifies murder. Hypocrisy does not matter — whether that means using a hated Western computer or flocking to a despised Western capital. This craziness is actually an agenda of sorts, proclaiming to the wretched, "Purge yourself of the modern West (sort of) and fool yourself into thinking that you will have power, honor, and wealth as never before."

Update: A. Clwyd makes a passionate defense of the merits of the Iraq invasion

The torture and execution of political opponents and the hunting down of dissident elements were to be a consistent feature of Saddam Hussein's regime for the next 20 years. And these abuses did not end with the first Gulf war in 1991. On a recent visit to southern Iraq, I saw evidence of the military campaign waged against the Marsh Arabs, which continued right up until the fall of the Ba'athists. Such a regime forfeited the right to be tolerated by liberal opinion.

Some will continue to argue that internal repression is not a matter of legitimate concern for other countries. I disagree. There are basic human rights that must be defended. The strict adherence to state sovereignty as the defining factor in international law, far from being a guard against acts of aggression, has become a barrier that allows oppression to continue unchecked by the international community. Who would now say that it was correct not to intervene in Rwanda?

For seven years, Indict, the organisation I chaired, collected detailed witness statements on Iraqi war crimes. Our QC, Clare Montgomery, was firmly of the opinion that we could have indicted the leading members of the regime in a European court of law. Indeed, we were advised that short of getting Saddam to sign a confession in his own blood, we had all the evidence we needed.

The Ultimate Outsourcing Story

You would think that the nature of certain jobs would always protected themfrom the outsourcing trend. I certainly would have placed funeral houses in that category. However, as this story shows, not even jobs in the funeral industry are protected from being outsourced.

Germans are shipping their loved ones to eastern European graveyards and crematoriums to beat the rising price of funerals at home. The trend has been labelled "corpse tourism" and is on the rise in Berlin and other cities close to the borders with former Iron Curtain states such as Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

US Unborn Victim Law Stirs Abortion Controversy

Voice of America has a good summary on the controversy regarding the new legislation that would make it a separate offense to harm or kill a fetus if a pregnant woman is attacked in a federal crime.

Under the bill, which the House passed last month, violence against a pregnant woman would be viewed as two separate crimes: one against her and one against the fetus at any stage of the pregnancy. The assailant would not have to know the woman was pregnant to be prosecuted.

opponents argue the legislation is an effort to erode abortion rights, established by the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling known as Roe versus Wade, by recognizing for the first time a fetus or embryo as a person with separate legal rights in the eyes of federal law.

Opinion polls indicate the legislation enjoys wide public support, particularly in the aftermath of a high-profile murder case in California