Arbitrary power of the state
[US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice] met human rights activists and said she wanted to help them build institutions to protect people from the “arbitrary power of the state”… wait for it… in Russia.
Politics
Posts tagged with 'Politics':
Amusing Esquire opinion piece on the anti-knowledge movement
I'm not sure which bit of this Esquire opinion piece I like most, but maybe this fantastic 2005 quote: “We've been attacked,” [says pastor Ray Mummert], “by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture.”
Congo
Turns out the Republic of the Congo is not the same country as the Democratic Republic of the Congo… And some disturbing reports from the DRC :/.
Peak milk?
Peak oil is so last year. Milk is the new oil. And while that means more money for NZ farmers, it will also accelerate a problematic trend.
Diabetic?
On a bus? In a coma? That's a tazin'. (Leeds, UK)
Meeting with a man?
Saudi? Gang raped? That's a jailin'. (Saudi Arabia)
TV journalist/human rights activist?
Kidnapped by masked men? Beaten and left in a field? That's an arrestin'. (Moscow, Russia)
Results of consequence-free environments
ABC News carries this disturbing report of drugging and gang rape, followed by willful destruction of evidence, borderline kidnapping, and legal protection of in-house perps, in Iraq contractor KBR.
Dubai jailings of random travelers
So, it turns out if you're travelling via Dubai and you have a tiny speck of cannabis on the bottom of your shoe – we're talking 0.003g here, such as you might get walking any random place – you can not only be arrested, you've got a great chance of getting put in jail for four years. Oh, and poppy seeds from a bread roll? That's a jailing too. Melatonin, you too. Now, watch and be amazed as I never, ever, EVER, fly Emirates through their hub.
1% of adults incarcerated in the United States
While researching the numbers on the current recession in America I ran into this disturbing Pew Centre report from earlier in the year putting the number of people incarcerated in the United States at the start of the year to more than 2.3 million – over 1% of the total US adult population.
Media7 on Labour's flop campaign
In addition to a bunch of stuff about past spin doctors and an interesting segment about the Maori Party and what its members up north have been trying to do for the local communities, the election night special of Russell Brown Media7 show had some interesting discussion about the recent campaign.
Black Power!
Ari at Powershop has set up a cool promotion for new signups – signup from this Black Power promo and they'll give $20 to the important Creative Freedom Internet Blackout NZ campaign against the unjudicial ‘guilt on accusation’ law that's been passed on copyright infringements.
NATO/Jordan hookups
Wikileaks has been making itself useful over the past few months, discovering that the password to a now-offline NATO document in a Pentagon repository used to give the official line on the war in Afghanistan to their PR flacks was in fact “progress”, and the document had some interesting things to not say:
China, government, savings, and conspicuous consumption
One of the interesting things Jonathan Siegel talked about from his Beijing trip was the attitudes Chinese people have to their finances, and to their government:
UK Orwelling more
Grrr. The UK will now require that you file your travel plans with the government whenever you leave the country – whether citizen or noncitizen, going for the day or for a year, needing a passport or not.
Somalia pirates and European toxic waste
In an interesting January 2009 article in the Independent (recently re-run in the Huffington Post), Johann Hari makes the surprising argument that Somalia's current wave of piracy is due not just to the collapse of civil government but is also in significant part a response to the dumping of Swiss/Italian/other nuclear and chemical waste, believed to be in large part by an illicit Italian operation, on Somalia's beaches, poisoning both the fish and the locals (particularly after natural disasters broke the transport containers open):
Teabagging
Torshin linked to this unbelievable (to anyone under about 30, or who is intrepid enough to visit urbandictionary.com – Mum and Dad, if you're reading, not you) segment about the Republicans protesting Obama's tax rates (the anchor's main argument being that they're lower than under Reagan when the Republicans didn't protest, so STFU) along with some blatant lies from Fox about their well-organised coverage of the astroturfed rallies:
Onward, Christian soldiers!
Anyone who thought that Bush's speechwriter's slip in referring to the Middle-Eastern invasions as a “Crusade” was just a poor choice of words and nothing more significant might be interested to see GQ's collection of title pages from Donald Rumsfeld's defence briefings – featuring proud photos of tanks, missile launches, soldiers praying etc., superimposed bible quotes supposedly backing their invasions (“thou shalt not kill” is needless to say not one of them). Not really the kind of thing that should be appearing in top-level state military advice.
Surveillance in the UK vs. Europe
The UK's steady slide towards a surveillance culture has been much noted by everyone from journalists to former police chiefs, but as this interesting article quotes from a 2005 report produced by Martin Gill and Angela Spriggs, of Leicester University, for the Home Office: “The majority of the schemes evaluated did not reduce crime and even where there was a reduction this was mostly not due to CCTV…there was a lack of realism about what could be expected from CCTV. In short, it was oversold—by successive governments—as the answer to crime problems.”
Clone stamping reveals Google Earth image doctoring
Iran's poor use of the clone stamp tool in the photos of their rocket tests was widely reported, but I find The Netherland's use of the clone stamp tool to paper over presumed military facilities near the border with Germany much more interesting, because the normal mechanism used for such facilities on Google Earth is to block the area entirely or restrict the resolution available, both of which are fair enough; that other countries are allowed to actually doctor the images Google shows us as well is much more interesting.
Guns and t-shirts
Ah, America… truly special. Undoubtably the only country where you can be arrested for wearing anti-Bush t-shirts yet take assault rifles to see the president. Also the only place where a comedy show delivers more reliable news than the news:
The Bugle on quantitative easing
This is probably the best explanation so far of exactly how ‘quantitative easing’ works:
So the [UK] government has responded in traditional style by throwing more money at the problem, more quantitative easing. As St George, our [the UK's] patron saint used to say, the best way to kill a baby-eating dragon is to continue feeding babies to it until it's too fat to breathe. Because in the long run, you'll make a net saving on babies.
John Clarke explains the BP oil spill response
Expat John Clarke does a sterling job explaining the BP oil spill response: