Month: July 2009

by Chris Bodenner

Staks Rosch flags a striking story from across the pond:

On Friday July 11th, 2009, Ireland passed the Defamation Bill by one vote. One of the aspects of this bill would make it illegal to criticize religion… any religion under penalty of fines up to 25,000 Euros. That is the equivalent to nearly $35,000. When I first heard this story on the internets, I was certain that it was a false story. I read the story, googled it, checked out legitimate Ireland news sites, and double checked more Ireland news sites. The story checks out.

The Garda Siochana is the Irish police who can now (under this law) break into people’s homes and confiscate copies of any book which might be critical of any religion. I keep trying to point out that any religious criticism is a crime, because many Christians are critical of differing religions. Atheists are not the only ones being targeted here. Simply claiming that the Pope is not infallible might be considered blasphemous to many Catholics. Claiming that the prophet Joseph Smith was not really visited by angels and given magic golden plates would be blasphemous to Mormons. Mentioning the prophet Mohammad without adding the phrase “peace be upon him” would be considered blasphemous to Muslims. And claiming that Scientology is a sham and that Tom Cruise is crazy would obviously be blasphemous to Scientologists.

Blasphemy against atheists? Check. Catholics? Check. Mormons? Check. Muslims? Check. Scientologists? Check. Tom Cruise? Check:

by Conor Friedersdorf

Jeff Jacoby remarks on typical Congressional behavior that ought to be scandalous:

Congress passed the gigantic, $787 billion “stimulus’’ bill in February – the largest spending bill in history – after having had only 13 hours to master its 1,100 pages. A 300-page amendment was added to Waxman-Markey, the mammoth cap-and-trade energy bill, at 3 a.m. on the day the bill was to be voted on by the House. And that wasn’t the worst of it, as law professor Jonathan Adler of Case Western Reserve University noted in National Review Online:

“When Waxman-Markey finally hit the floor, there was no actual bill. Not one single copy of the full legislation that would, hours later, be subject to a final vote was available to members of the House. The text made available to some members of Congress still had ‘placeholders’ – blank provisions to be filled in by subsequent language.’’

Simpler, shorter laws more accessible to the citizenry would result. Legislators couldn't plausibly claim ignorance about an egregious measure slipped into a bill for which they voted. Special interests would have less ability to hide advantageous language in thickets of subsections. The majority party couldn't game the system, using timing and parliamentary procedure to pass measures that wouldn't survive scrutiny. Powerful politicians would demand better, clearer writing if they had to wade through it themselves. An ability to consider fewer total pieces of legislation might even encourage the House and Senate to better prioritize their time. Finally, the average citizen wouldn't regard the reality of their legislative system as a corrupt sham.

Am I right in perceiving that it is usually conservatives who are upset about this issue? Why is that? It seems like the kind of thing that regular citizens on the right and left could agree to be outraged about. That's what I propose anyway, though I'll be damned if I can think of how legislators could actually be forced to put in the requisite effort to read what they vote on. 

UPDATE:

A commenter writes:

You ask "Am I right in perceiving that it is usually conservatives who are upset about this issue? Why is that?"

In a word, no.  I think conservatives and liberals alternate their outrage, depending on whether the substantively support or oppose the measure at issue.  Remember the PATRIOT Act?  I don't have time to research comprehensive links, but the "debate" on that bill was similarly abbreviated, and hardly anyone read the final text (of this 342 page bill) before they voted on it either.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act#Controversy; http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/17326res20030403.html.  I didn't hear conservatives screaming about that then.

True!

by Conor Friedersdorf

In news items about Pakistan, one often hears that efforts to oust Taliban fighters from that country risk destabilizing a government officially friendly to the United States.

Why is that so? Consider some of the arresting details in this dispatch by William Wheeler. It opens with a horrific illustration of why families try to flee their homes when fighting is nearby:

Many others flee successfully, though that basically means a dismal existence in makeshift refugee camps where disaffected young men brood over the lack of a home or livelihood. Brought together by circumstance into tight quarters, it makes for a volatile mix.

The government seems to have done little to prepare for such a crisis, creating a growing danger of instability from an operation that was supposed to achieve the exact opposite. Although the scale of the crisis may have been hard to predict, the army's lack of planning for the war's humanitarian implications was destined to alienate many of those whom the Pakistani government most needs to convince it can protect.

Rifaat Hussain, a professor of defense and strategic studies at Quaid-i-Azam University, in Islamabad, told me that "90 percent of the army's resources are dedicated fully to making the military operations a success. But even if they are able to defeat the militants in the Swat area, if you have 10,000 or 20,000 disgruntled youth coming out of these refugee camps and then picking up arms or joining hands with those who have been defeated, that can create another nightmare situation for Pakistan." As Hussain put it, the government's inattention to the civilian fallout has left many in Swat without the feeling that "they have a dog in this fight."

One wonders if strategic considerations are ever going to produce armies with humanitarian teams specifically trained to win over crucial populations — or at least to avoid driving them to the other side. It seems as though every modern armed conflict produces these humanitarian crises that directly amd significantly impact the very objectives the military is attempting to secure.

by Chris Bodenner Hossein Ali Montazeri, the most senior cleric in Iran, has issued a series of fatwas against Khamenei and his regime, calling them "illegitimate" and defying Islam. Cue propaganda:

Raja News, which is a strong supporter of Ahmadinejad, claims that Ayatollah Montazeri has been “sick for several months,” suffering from “imbalance and severe memory loss.” […] According to their reports, statements that are supposedly from Montazeri are in fact being written by other people. “Mohsen Kadivar, who is outside Iran, along with one of Montazeri’s sons are primarily responsible for creating these fatwas and statements, using Montazeri’s stamp and publishing them through anti-revolutionary media and have probably downgraded Montazeri’s role to a low level political element.”

Tehran Bureau's Muhammad Sahimi says the fatwas "are bound to greatly influence the thinking of other ayatollahs." One such leader is Rajsanjani, who, according to Mousavi's Facebook page, is planning to deliver the Friday prayers this week. Scott Lucas is psyched:

So the perfect storm of the opposition from “without”, the public challenge symbolised by the leadership of the Presidential candidate Mousavi, and the opposition from “within”, the private manoeuvring of former President Rafsanjani, may be imminent.

Rafsanjani, having refused to lead prayers in recent weeks and limited his pulbic appearances, re-emerges dramatically on Friday, and a vast crowd of demonstrators marches to the University of Tehran to welcome and applaud him. It turns the regime’s public displays — an ayatollah, even the Supreme Leader, setting out the appropriate line to the acclaim of followers — against it.

This plan also has the clever beauty of complicating the regime’s response. Does it dare tell Rafsanjani that he cannot speak on Friday? Do security forces dare block marchers who, after all, are only trying to worship as “good” Muslims?

This, in short, could be the largest mass gathering since 15 June, complete with the presence of Rafsanjani, Mousavi, and Khatami. Start counting down the days….

by Conor Clarke

Richard Posner says he's got a solution for climate change:

On behalf of the environmentalists' notoriously powerful political circles, let me say that the opposition to using a pollutant to reduce global warming does not have much to do with public relations. It does have a lot to do with "the bad effects of increasing sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere."

One problem, as Posner mentions, is an increase in acid rain. But there are two bigger issues. The first is that the ecological costs of cooling the planet with sulfur will not be distributed evenly: My colleague Graeme Wood says most of those costs will fall on Africans (who will enjoy a hotter climate) and South Asians (who will enjoy less reliable rainfall). If you believe, as I do, that the best argument for mitigating global climate change is the future plight of the developing world — which will overwhelmingly bear the costs — then pumping millions of tons of sulfur into the atmosphere is, er, somewhat less appetizing than it might otherwise seem.

The second problem is that sulfur engineering would be difficult (and perhaps impossible) to reverse without risking calamity. As Graeme writes, "sulfur aerosols would cool the planet, but we’d risk calamity the moment we stopped pumping: the aerosols would rain down and years’ worth of accumulated carbon would make temperatures surge." So if we began pumping sulfur into the atmosphere and then realized, after several decades that there was a large unexpected cost — greater than foreseen fishery depletion, say — it would be hard to turn back.

I confess there's a certain escapist fun to imagining thousands of zeppelins circling the earth, spraying sulfur into the clouds — just as watching Minority Report or Star Wars is fun. Unfortunately, the unsexy, fuddy-duddy solution of pricing carbon (via a tax or cap & trade) has a lot to recommend it. 

by Chris Bodenner

Mahmoud and his amazing technicolor war charts:

(Hat tip: Enduring America)

by Chris Bodenner

Farnaz Fassihi profiles the Basij – and one militiaman in particular:

For Mr. Moradani, the biggest shock during the election turmoil came in his personal life. He had recently gotten engaged to a young woman from a devout, conservative family. A week into the protests, he says, his fiancée called him with an ultimatum. If he didn't leave the Basij and stop supporting Mr. Ahmadinejad, he recalls her saying, she wouldn't marry him.

He told her that was impossible. "I suffered a real emotional blow," he says. "She said to me, 'Go beat other people's children then,' and 'I don't want to have anything to do with you,' and hung up on me."

She returned the ring he gave her, and hasn't returned his phone calls. "The opposition has even fooled my fiancée," he says.

by Patrick Appel

Christina Davidson points out the limits of unemployment data:

If in the week prior to the survey a respondent has had more than one hour of paid employment, or has performed more than 15 hours of unpaid work, they would not be counted as unemployed. So, for example, a 45-year-old laid-off business executive I met last week, who had started mowing his neighbors' lawns and doing odd jobs for cash because he needed money to have his car repaired in order to go on any interviews for a full-time job, would be counted among the employed members of the labor force.

This is partly why tracking hours worked is preferred by some economists, but all data have their caveats.