Micropanacea

First impressions go a long way, and today I've not only heard of the country of Palau for the first time, I've become a big fan. A land of beautiful beaches, several name spellings and a very cool aerial view (according to my copious research), Palau (or Belau or Pelew) is making a name for itself as a peaceful haven for unwanted souls.

My first finding was that Burmese refugees, relentlessly persecuted in their own country and increasingly turned away from countries already struggling to support thousands of refugees, have been welcomed to Palau with open arms. The refugees told of feeling peace and freedom in Palau; how people had been warm and friendly; how one senator went so far as to allow the eleven refugees to stay on his farm after their funds ran out while they wait for word on their asylum applications. Certainly beats being shoved out to sea in a boat with no motor. Of course, eleven refugees are probably easier to house on a farm than tens of thousands, but one must at least be touched by the effort from a country with a population of 20,000.

I then read on to find that Palau has offered to take in some 13 Guantanamo detainees, all Uighurs from China. This will constitute the largest transfer of prisoners since President Obama first announced the closure of the prison. The U.S. is reluctant to send them back to China as the country considers them to be terrorists (despite the U.S. clearing them of enemy combatant status sometime after detaining them in Afghanistan and Pakistan) and will likely welcome them back with some harsh sentence. After some negotiation with the U.S., Palau agreed to take them in.

Although not everyone the country will be warmly welcoming their new neighbors, and in spite some suspicions that the move is based more on good money than on good will, the government of Palau is standing by its assertion that their decision was based on human rights more than any other factor. My hat goes off to Palau, even if the Uighurs decide they'd prefer not to resettle on the island paradise.

In consideration of this theme, I'd like to add my voice to those encouraging countries around the world -- most especially the United States -- to take on the challenge of housing the detainees from Guantanamo. Not surprisingly, the debate in this country seems to have almost instantaneously morphed from one centered on human rights and responsibility for the decisions and actions of our country to an opportunity for spinning and scaring and steering public opinion down well-worn partisan trails. I have no doubt that many throughout the country sincerely believe that these detainees will pose a grave threat if they are located in our country - even in our prisons. But in my opinion, it is far more dangerous to our public image, our self respect and our national soul to keep a place like Guantanamo open in its current form. Those prisoners pose no greater threat to us than we do to ourselves. Let them in.

Fortunately, some countries are beginning to do so already. In fact, the reality is that over 540 detainees have been transferred to over 30 countries in the last few years and many countries continue to step. Belgium, Britain, Ireland, France, Portugal, Spain, Bermuda, Albania, Italy and even Venezuela (for what its worth) have all agreed to consider taking or have already taken prisoners for resettlement, usually in the face of protests and backlash from their citizens. But the need is still real and extensive, if concerning and expensive. I only hope the U.S. citizens will be willing to take a similar "risk" to defend the values this country was built on.

In the meantime, well done, Palau!

I have seen groups of people in Seattle waiting patiently to cross an intersection at night, in the rain, when few or no cars were anywhere in sight.

I have seen individuals in Boston walk directly in front of moving cars despite the fact that the light was green and the cars had the inarguable right of way.

Frankly, both scenarios disappoint me.

My general rule for pedestrian behavior is thus: Sans a walk sign or a protected crosswalk (with a few exceptions), pedestrians should cross whenever they feel like it so long as they never cause a car to so much as touch their breaks.

More specifically:
1. If you obey the walk sign, you have nothing to worry about. Take your time and enjoy your pedestrian rights.
2. Same as number one, unless there is a car waiting to turn right across your walk box, in which case try to hustle your bustle. It costs more for a car to brake and wait than for you to shimmy it up across the street. In fact, you could probably use the exercise.
3. If you have the option to call the walk sign but there is only one car in sight, don't bother pushing the button and changing the lights; wait for the car to pass and then hail mary across the street without inconveniencing drivers with an unnecessary red light.
4. If you are preparing to use a protected crosswalk, do your best to hit the gaps in traffic (without endangering yourself, of course) and walk with purpose. Meaning, if you can avoid slowing or stopping traffic to cross, do so.
5. Pay attention to crowds and don't be a lemming. People will dart across the street under all sorts of inappropriate circumstances and it only takes a moment of not paying attention to be sucked into their mob mentality. Stand your ground!

I dare any of you to disagree with or improve upon this, my pedestrian proclamation.

Two things converged to pique my interest on the recent Israeli/Gaza conflict. First, I attended a Chomsky lecture at MIT last week where the Professor explained that this was just another example of Israel's internationally criminal attempts to secure their heritage lands and induce by force and international pressure an end to Gaza's [also criminal, but proportionately far less so] rocket fire into Israel. Second, I received an email from Amnesty International urging me to forward the following email to my congressmen. (I sent a somewhat modified version instead.)

Amnesty's solution is outlined in the email below:

As your constituent and as a member of Amnesty International, I urge you to work to help end the violence and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Since the conflict began on December 27, 2008, over 1000 Palestinians have been killed, 398 of them women and children. Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians have been killed. The latest violence is compounding an already dire humanitarian situation and the limited amount of supplies permitted to enter is inadequate for a population of 1.5 million people. According to John Ging, a senior UN official, one million people in Gaza were without electricity, with 750,000 lacking access to water.

To ameliorate this crisis, Amnesty International calls on Congress to press the Israeli government to increase the number of trucks allowed in with humanitarian aid, and calls on authorities on both sides to increase the duration of the humanitarian truce so that more supplies can enter. In a recent statement, Amnesty International expressed concern that humanitarian workers and medical staff were not safe to perform their jobs. Nineteen medical personnel have been killed since December 27th. Attacking civilians is a clear violation of international humanitarian law and Amnesty International has condemned both Israel’s disproportionate use of force in its attack on Gaza and rocket fire from armed Palestinian groups, including Hamas, into southern Israel. Amnesty International calls on authorities in Gaza to take immediate steps to cease the firing of missiles into southern Israel.

Congress should also request that Egypt allow for a greater number of wounded Palestinians from Gaza to enter for medical treatment. There are over 4,500 wounded Palestinians but because of a lack of medical supplies and the destruction of much of the medical infrastructure in Gaza, they must leave Gaza to seek medical treatment.

In addition, the US should suspend any transfers of weapons to Israel until a thorough investigation is completed certifying that no US weapons were used or are being used in the commission of human rights violations during these latest attacks on Gaza.

Thank you for your consideration for the above concerns.

Please share any thoughts you might have on how appropriate or effective these measure might be. (Oh, and I added the bold to that little bit about US weapons there at the end.)

Like many people, I am giddily anticipating the upcoming regime change, not specifically because it means a certain someone will be outgoing or that a certain someone will be incoming, but because it is the first time since we've had a new president that I've actually been hopeful about what he might accomplish (though also a little worried about how blank my visions of it seem to be).

What I'm really interested in at the moment is economics.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should let you know that I'm reading The Shock Doctrine. In light of the same interest, I should perhaps also mention that after reading Atlas Shrugged, I temporarily changed my major from Humanities to Manufacturing Engineering. Suffice it to say that reading anything seems to immediately reorganize for me the world as I know it, perhaps more easily than it should.

With that being said, let me over-conclusively state the obvious: a purely free market does not work in practice as it seems to in theory, and certainly not for the benefit of the general public, any more than communism does. Never mind at the moment that neither has been allowed to develop naturally or democratically -- the material point is that both are proposed in too pure an ideal state to be able to function in a real society.

Since the Great Depression, the U.S. has been more or less operating in a fancy and sometimes messy hybrid of the two. The balance has shifted here and there with one administration or another, the Bush administration recently trying hard to pull it back to the right and now Obama foreshadowing plans to swing right back to the left. Ultimately, I think it is possible to strike a balance between a private and public country, giving enough economic freedom to inspire innovation and ambition with just enough regulation to keep people healthy and dignified enough to engage in it.

So here's my question: What do we keep private and what do we operate as a state? Here are a few of my conclusions-for-the-moment:
EDUCATION: purely state. no private schools, no charter schools, no unequal distribution of funds contingent on property taxes of adjacent areas. we have NO chance of being a truly democratic society unless we can offer truly democratic education, which currently we can NOT.
HEALTH CARE: Hybrid. Someone please elaborate for me.
SOCIAL SECURITY: State, W., State.
HOW ABOUT RESOURCES? Unsure. There have been mixed results when developing countries have nationalized their resources. Often it simply brings brutal brutal people into power who can stay as long as they want because they control the country's sole source of wealth. Ideally, however, with some checks and balances, it could mean a guaranteed source of income that could replace some taxes, offer potential for healthy price controls, and curb further disparity between the super rich and the super poor. (Don't worry, I don't REALLY think state control of resources would ever become a glimmer of a reality in the U.S. Now resources control of the state...that's a bit closer to home.)

Your thoughts?

When it comes to defining and solving Major World Problems, I think the key is efficiency, so I'll try to cover 3 in as many weeks.

1. Climate Change-The Problem Climate change has been happening for years. Millions and millions of years, including both ice ages and times of tropical paradise in places as unlikely as North Dakota. Changes in climate have caused ocean levels to rise and fall, created and evaporated vast inland seas, covered whole continents alternatively in jungles and ice, and plowed gigantic furrows in the earth's crust.

Today, Climate Change is sells cars, light bulbs, diapers, and virtually every other product you thought was mature and immune to radical, game changing innovation. This is an enormous triumph for the companies that sell such things, whose enterprises needed the proverbial "shot in the arm." Other beneficiaries include scientists looking for grants, politicians seeking an issue, or people who have implicitly rejected organized religion yet still have a basic human desire to believe in something that requires both faith and sacrifice.

The only loser in this highly profitable frenzy is respect for the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Nearly all the products, infrastructure, and ridiculously ascetic proposals seem to have one thing in common. The use more energy, and have more environmental impact, than the old, lower margin way of doing things. Cars with nickle-cadmium batteries, ethanol fuel, mercury lined light bulbs, pv solar panels, nuclear power, all have a net negative effect on the environment compared to the the alternative products.

Since the gullibility of consumers is matched only by their total inability to do simple math, education is not a viable solution. There's just too many individuals and companies with a vested interest in seeing Climate Change established as fact, and very few who don't*. What this situation really calls for is a good placebo, but is that the real solution, and how would it work? (I'll post what I think it is later this week, I'm interested in hearing everyone's opinion first)

*Some people put the oil companies in this category, but they're not really. From a strategic point of view they know they're going to sell oil until they run out of leases, Climate Change is a good segway revenue sources (see Shell's windfarms). Some companies, such as Exxon, just know their leases will last longer than Climate Change as we know it.