Bush denies basic human rights

Here's another attempt by the Bush administration to deny basic human rights to people:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/26/politics/26detain.html?hp&ex=1098849600&en=625cd03fa770bac7&ei=5094&partner=homepage

The Bush administration isn't concerned with what's right or wrong, only what they can get away with. They have no concern for basic human rights. This type of reasoning is no better than that of Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosovich, or Adolf Hitler.

How the U.S. Works

I've said before that I thought terrorists would be more effective if they sponsored peaceful protests rather than acts of terror. They need advocates in the west to help sway public opinion, and acts of terror just turn public opinion against them. This is just a guess, but maybe the reason they don't think peaceful protest will work is because they don't understand how the U.S. works, so I thought I'd give some examples of how some issues in the U.S. are being worked out. This paticular entry will only contain one example, but I'll bring up others later.

As most people know, the U.S. has something called the Separation of Church and State. This means that the government will not do anything to support one religion over another. Now, our society has historically been mostly Christian, and we have a lot of Christian elements in our government and in our society.

Shortly after World War II, my city built a cross on top of a local mountain called Mount Soledade to commemorate the soldiers who had died. Since that time, the city has been responsible for maintaining the site and the cross. Lately, a bunch of athiests have decided that the city is violating the separation of church and state because it is spending tax money to maintain the cross, and they entered into a legal battle to get the city to take the cross down. On the other side of this battle are people who would like to see the cross stay. They mounted a counter attack arguing that the city could sell the land to another group that could then take the responsibility to maintain the cross, then the state wouldn't be spending tax money on this. So, they did this, but they didn't have the bidding be open enough and the athiests argued that this still wasn't legal for some reason so now they're having to do this all over again only slightly differently.

This issue is still not resolved. We have some kind of a vote on it this November when we vote on a lot of other issues. However, the point is that we have a controversy over here and nobody killed anybody over it.

By the way, although I'm an athiest, I don't agree with the taliban-like actions that some athiests have. I licken the attempt to force the removal of the Mount Soledade cross to that of the Taliban in blowing up the Buddhist statues in Afganistan. The only athiest issue like this that I am behind is the removal of the words "Under God" from our pledge of allegiance. These words were not in the original pledge, and I don't like having to insert a lie every time I pledge allegiance to my country.

For those who are interested but don't already know it, our pledge of allegiance goes as follows:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Vote Donna Frye for Mayor

Hey All,

I'm usually more interested in global news, but this is one issue that I've taken an interest in that is local to my home of San Diego.

For those of you who aren't familiar with San Diego, it's a fast growing city on the U.S. west coast, just above the border with Mexico. It's not as big as Los Angeles, which is right next to us, but it's still pretty big. I think I read recently somewhere that we have around 800,000 voters in the city, and the population actually spreads past the edges of the city into surrounding communities. Our main economies are tourism, the military, and several high-tech businesses. Because we are growing fast, we also have healthy construction and real-estate industries.

One of my beefs about this city is that for several decades now, our city government has been hell-bent to attract as much business as possible. This simply increases the rate of growth. They say they don't want San Diego to become another L.A., but they're doing everything in their power to do just that.

I wish I knew more about Donna Frye, but I'll tell you what I do know. She's lived in San Diego for a long time. Her husband, Skip Frye, is a well know local surfer and he has a surfboard shop and makes surfboards for a living. She joined the City Council about, what, four years ago?, and has gained a reputation for being a maverick. She is pro-environment and anti-growth. She is also fiscally concervative, and was the only council member to vote against under-funding the city pension plan, which has since become a big local issue.

Some things that she's stood for recently: stopping the raking of kelp piles from the local beaches. When I was a kid, I remember seeing these big piles of kelp on the beaches (maybe 3-4 feet in diameter, 2 feet tall), with little flies buzzing all around. They were unpleasant, but they were a natural part of the beach environment. I remember one picture of my cousin wearing a kelp hula dress on the beach. I think she thought she was being a natural California girl. Anyway, after a while, the beaches just got cleaner. I didn't think much about it, but the city had decided to begin raking up the kelp piles to make the beaches more attractive to tourists.

Then, a few years ago, a controversy arose over this practice. Some people were claiming that raking up the kelp piles was inhibiting the grunion from running on the beach. (Grunion are small fish that come up on the beach sometimes in the middle of the night to mate and lay eggs. It used to be considered great sport to go down to the beach and catch as many as you could. Supposedly you could eat them raw and whole. I've looked for them on several occasions, but I've never seen any.)

Anyway, I don't remember what the argument was, but the argument on the other side was that it wasn't proven that raking up the kelp was hurting the grunion runs. This is a common argument that people use to allow them to keep doing what their doing a little longer. In this case the tourist industry wanted to continue raking the beaches, to continue attracting tourists and bringing in tourist dollars. However, I think the burden of proof should be on the tourist industry to prove that raking the beaches doesn't adversly affect the environment. As long as there is any evidence at all, and until they can prove otherwise, they should stop raking the beaches.

Another issue that she's stood behind is allowing the seals to have exclusive use of Children's Cove in La Jolla. Children's Cove is spot of beach (maybe 100 feet long) in La Jolla that has a man-made sea wall protecting it from the full force of the waves. The sea wall was built many years ago, but I'm not sure exactly when. The idea was to create a sheltered area of beach that children could play in.

Recently, seals have begun to make this beach their own. For a while, the city roped off the beach so that people wouldn't disturb the seals. However, local people started complaining that the smell from the seals was to bad, and they wanted the beach opened up to people again.

I should probably also mention that La Jolla is a very wealthy neighborhood.

Now, San Diego has I don't know how many miles of beaches. Much of the La Jolla area is rocky, but most of the rest of San Diego has long sandy beaches, and the waves aren't that bad. Children play in them all the time. I think we can afford to reserve 100 feet of beach for the use of the seals.

Anyway, for many years, I've felt that our Mayor and City Council was owned by the tourism and construction industries. I think if we can elect Donna Frye for Mayor, we can begin to free ourselves of their influences and try to save San Diego from becomming another L.A..

One problem though, is that Donna joined the mayoral race too late to get her name on the ballot. She's running as a right-in candidate, which means people have to know that she's running, and remember to write her name on the ballot. It is my opinion that the vast majority of people barely know our current Mayor's name, let alone the names of the people who are running against him. The vast majority of people will walk into the voting booths and see two names, "Dick Murphy" and "Ron Roberts". If they think things are going okay, they'll vote for the incumbent, Dick Murphy. If they don't like the way things are going, they'll vote for the other guys. Only those people who actually know what's going on will even know that Donna Frye is an option, and with San Diego being a fairly conservative city, many of those will vote for either Dick or Ron anyway.

Why Bush Really Attacked Iraq

There has been a lot of discussion about the real reason Bush attacked Iraq, but only I know the real reason. The real reason is that George Bush was jealous of Saddam Hussein. Think about it. Here Bush is, leader of the most powerful nation on earth, and he can't get away with half the stuff Saddam Hussein can. That kind of thing has just got to eat away at a man's craw.

The Parable of the Quarter

Bushes useless war in Iraq reminds me of a joke I heard when I was a kid. It seems this kid was crawling around on the ground with his head down, looking all over. His friend walks up and asks what he's doing. The kid says "I'm looking for my quarter that I lost." The friend then asks "Where did you lose it?" The kid answers "At school." Then the friend asks "Well then why are you looking for it here?" and the kid answers "The light is better here."

Get it? See, the kid is looking for his quarter in the wrong place, and Bush is attacking the wrong enemy! Pretty funny, huh?

I think we should attack France next, those people are really snobby over there. But we should wait till after next year 'cause my wife wants to visit Paris first. It would be a drag to only see it after it had been bombed and everything. :(

- LeRoy

What's under those Burkas?

Okay, this is another question I've been wondering for a while, and before anyone gets all offended I would like to point out that for several years now it has been a standing joke for women to wonder what Scottish men wear under their kilts, so lay off.

Besides, I have a lot of very intellectual reasons for wanting to know the answer to this question, and I'm going to get into those later. For now though, I want to formally pose the question, in case you haven't figured it out yet:

What do Muslim women wear under their burkas, and other such all-encompassing garments?

Okay, now for my highly intellectual reasons for asking:

First, I think most westerners picture Middle Eastern climate as being very hot, and they think that these garments must be uncomfortably hot in these climates, leading to excessive sweating, B.O., and a host of other cleanliness-related problems, and this is part of why they see insistence on the burka as oppressive against women.

Also, since most westerners believe that the main purpose of the burka is to prevent a women from expressing her sexuality, I think they assume that the women must also be wearing other garments underneath the burka. After all, a burka with nothing underneath would be kind of, well, hot. I mean, just imagine walking around completely naked underneath nothing but a sheet. Dang.

Anyway, my purpose here is not to justify the violence sometimes committed against women who do not wear a burka. There is no justification for throwing acid on a women's face. This is just an attempt to look beyond the view portrayed by western media to make sure that what we're seeing is the whole truth, and not the result of our own cultural bias.

Any comments?

- LeRoy

Muslim Democracy

This idea has been kicking around in the back of my head for a couple of months now, and something just gelled, so I'm going to try to spit it out.

The idea was triggered by stories of the oppression of Muslim women in highly religious Middle Eastern countries, namely Afghanistan under the Taliban, where they must never go outside without being completely covered with a Burka, and without having a male relative with them. They can't vote, go to school or hold a job (with a few exceptions). Also, there was a discussion in another blog (No Pain No Gain) that got me thinking about this again recently, and caused this idea to gel in my head.

Part of the problem, obviously, is that they can't vote, so they have virtually no say in the laws that are passed to govern them. We could just let them have the vote, and this is probably what will happen, but obviously there is a lot of cultural opposition to this, at least among the men, and I don't like the idea of forcing western solutions to problems on everyone else in the world. What worked for us may not necessarily be the best fit for everyone else, and if we insist that our solution is the best one and force everyone else to adopt it, then we miss out on the possibility that someone might come up with a better idea.

I don't pretend to know a lot about Muslim culture, but I just want to propose this idea and see what people, mostly Muslim people, think of it.

What if a Muslim country, say Afghanistan, implemented a democracy with two governments, one entirely made up of men, and the other entirely made up of women? Men could only vote for officials in their government, and women could only vote for officials in theirs. Also, men and women would only have to abide by the laws dictated by their respective governments.

The two governments don't have to be structured the same way, or hold elections at the same time, or have similar numbers of officials. They each can be structured according to the way their constituents want.

Of course, the two governments couldn't be completely independent. The laws they pass would have to be coordinated with each other. In fact, just for efficiency, you would probably have a large body of laws that apply to both. For example, after a divorce, you couldn't have the men's government deciding that the husband gets to keep the house, and the women's government deciding that the wife gets the house.

Another way might be to have a single government with both men's and women's halves. In this idea, for every male representative, there would be a female counterpart. Again, the men in the country could only vote on male officials, and women on female officials. Then they would work together to pass a single body of laws.

Why do I think that this system might work better in Muslim countries than simply allowing women to vote or run for office?

Well, first of all, if we simply let women vote, they will still be governed by men, even if they are men that the women helped elect. Second, there will be a lot of pressure by male family members to vote for men who will support the traditional laws. And if we let women run for office, they will still be in the minority. But, if women can form their own government, we will suddenly have an entire female government formed at once. Also, and I'm not sure of this, but I think the men will consider it beneath their dignity to involve themselves too deeply in women's affairs, so they will not put nearly so much pressure on the women to vote a certain way.

Also, and again I'm not sure of this, but I would imagine that there is already a fairly well developed power structure among women, at least within a single household or family, with the matriarch dictating rules to the younger or less powerful women in the family. This female government could be considered a natural outgrowth of this. I think this might make the formation of such a government more palatable to men.

The women also wouldn't be ruling over the men, with I think a lot of Muslim men might find objectionable.

So what do people think? I'm sure the idea could use a lot of fine tuning, but does it seem like something that would even remotely work? Does it provide any advantages to the Muslim ethos over a traditional western style democracy?

Thanks for reading,
LeRoy

Voting Reform

I can't remember if I've posted about this before, but I think there's a serious problem when you can't vote for a minor party without throwing your vote away. For example, in the upcoming election, let's say I liked Nader better than Kerry, but that I'd much prefer Kerry over Bush. Since there is no way Nader can win, if I vote for him, I'll actually be helping Bush win. Nader might actually be the favorite choice of most people, but he can't win because no one thinks he can win, and no one wants to waste their vote on a candidate who can't win.

I've thought a little bit about this in the past, and I thought maybe some kind of runoff election might be a good way to go, but that's expensive, and it's hard enough to get people to go out and vote once, let alone multiple times. However, in my ignorance, I was unaware that a better solution has already been thought of, and they're going to implement it in San Francisco next month. The solution is called "ranked-choice voting". Basically, it involves being able to rank the candidates according to your first choice, second choice, etc.. It takes a long time to count the votes, but if we vote using computers, then that shouldn't be a problem.

Here is a link to an article that describes this more:

link

No, No, Nader!

Voting for Ralph Nader when you're trying to defeat Bush is like attacking Iraq when you're trying to defeat Al Qaeda.