Leftist Politics

"I go to a private school that is rather strict. Recently, the principal and school teacher council released a (very long) list of books we're not allowed to read. I was absolutely appalled, because a large number of the books were classics and others that are my favorites. One of my personal favorites, The Catcher in the Rye, was on the list, so I decided to bring it to school to see if I would really get in trouble. Well... I did but not too much. Then (surprise!) a boy in my English class asked if he could borrow the book, because he heard it was very good AND it was banned! This happened a lot and my locker got to overflowing with the banned books, so I decided to put the unoccupied locker next to me to a good use. I now have 62 books in that locker, about half of what was on the list. I took care only to bring the books with literary quality. Some of these books are:" - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

It is pretty crappy the school wants to train students to think like them, but a couple of things jumped out. She censored the list again for "literary quality" and don't they have a public library in this community? - Dave - SustainedEuphoria

"I've been on the trail of this historical nugget for a few years now. Until recently, the earliest known appearance of Ms. was nearly half a century later, from 1949. In The Story of Language, Mario Pei wrote: "Feminists, who object to the distinction between Mrs. and Miss and its concomitant revelatory features, have often proposed that the two present-day titles be merged into a single one, 'Miss' (to be written 'Ms.')." Pei states that Ms. had been "often proposed," but where were the proposals? The closest precursor that had been found was a 1932 letter to the New York Times where the title M's is suggested, not quite the same as Ms" - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

"Mousavi is something entirely different: his name stands for the genuine resuscitation of the popular dream which sustained the Khomeini revolution. Even if this dream was a utopia, one should recognize in it the genuine utopia of the revolution itself. What this means is that the 1979 Khomeini revolution cannot be reduced to a hard line Islamist takeover – it was much more. Now is the time to remember the incredible effervescence of the first year after the revolution, with the breath-taking explosion of political and social creativity, organizational experiments and debates among students and ordinary people. The very fact that this explosion had to be stifled demonstrates that the Khomeini revolution was an authentic political event, a momentary opening that unleashed unheard-of forces of social transformation, a moment in which “everything seemed possible.” What followed was a gradual closing through the take-over of political control by the Islam establishment. To put it in... more... - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

"1. It is claimed that Ahmadinejad won the city of Tabriz with 57%. His main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is an Azeri from Azerbaijan province, of which Tabriz is the capital. Mousavi, according to such polls as exist in Iran and widespread anecdotal evidence, did better in cities and is popular in Azerbaijan. Certainly, his rallies there were very well attended. So for an Azeri urban center to go so heavily for Ahmadinejad just makes no sense. In past elections, Azeris voted disproportionately for even minor presidential candidates who hailed from that province." - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

"Since 2001, Congress has appropriated about $830 billion to fund U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over that period, America’s reliance on contractors has grown to unprecedented proportions to support logistics, security, and reconstruction efforts related to those operations. More than 240,000 contractor employees—about 80 percent of them foreign nationals—now work in Iraq and Afghanistan, supporting the Department of Defense. Additional contractor employees support the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development." - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

"Lakhdar Boumediene is an Algerian (and Bosnian citizen) who, while living in Bosnia and working for the International Red Crescent, was arrested by the Bosnian government (at the behest of the Bush administration) shortly after 9/11 on charges of plotting to blow up a U.S. and British embassy, but was then quickly cleared by Bosnian courts of any wrongdoing and ordered released. But as he was about to be released -- in January, 2002 -- he was abducted by the U.S. military inside Bosnia and shipped to Guantanamo, where he remained without charges for the next almost 8 years, and was clearly tortured." - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

"In mid-2008, the U.S. Supreme Court -- in a case bearing his name -- ruled that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was unconstitutional because it denied Guantanamo detainees the right of habeas corpus (i.e., to have the validity of the accusations against them reviewed by a court). When, pursuant to that decision, Boumediene finally had a U.S. court review the accusations against... more... - joneilortiz

"Ed Whelan, a lawyer and conservative law pundit at National Review has been making the rounds criticizing Sopreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, largely for her statements regarding judges making policy. publius, a pseudonymous legal blogger, wrote a harshly critical post of Whelan's behavior, accusing him of being a willing stooge of the right-wing - a "legal hitman" In response Whelan outed publius, publishing his identity on the National Review website. publius added his side of the story. It's also worth reading Volokh's take on the original policy debate, which publius and Whelan each use in defense of their position." [Links provided at article.] - Steven Perez from Bookmarklet

"It's outmoded, inefficient, expensive, and discriminatory, but SEPTA continues to require that your Transpass either says M or F. But now a Facebook page is organizing riders to get SEPTA to drop this policy." - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

Come on SEPTA, it's called a TRANSpass, for crying out loud. - Daniel Dulitz

Haha. Good catch, Daniel Dulitz. - joneilortiz

"You can see this at work in an interesting back and forth between Robert Pindyck and Martin Weitzman on climate change policy, described here. Pindyck takes the down-the-line approach to the problem, estimating the future costs of warming and the benefits of policy action and determining that we should spend at most 2.5% of world income to slow or halt climate change. Weitzman, on the other hand, says that this is nuts. By tweaking just one or two variables, he says, you get wildly different outcomes. Simply by concluding that it matters whether the world ends in 400 years or not (irrelevant in Pindyck’s approach), one can then compute that up to 99% of income could reasonably be spent to avert warming. Cost-benefit analysis just doesn’t make sense in the context of climate change, Weitzman declares. Well, this just about makes Pindyck’s head explode. He begins warning that abandoning cost-benefit analysis will “cede the debate to radical environmentalists.” This seems absurd, but it does get at a difficult question — if we can’t use cost-benefit, how do we make these decisions?" - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

Yes. Ethics. - dkb

"The new names also peal back causality to the biomedical. Influenza can indeed be defined by its molecular structure, genetics, virology, pathogenesis, host biology, clinical course, treatment, modes of transmission, and phylogenetics. Such work is, of course, essential. But limiting investigation to these topics misses critical mechanisms that are operating at other broader levels of socioecological organization. These mechanisms include how livestock are owned and organized across time and space. In other words, we need to get at the specific decisions specific governments and companies make that promote the emergence of virulent influenza. Thinking virological alone disappears such explanations, very much in the hog industry’s favor." - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

"The tip of the problem was a 1984 case that came to be known as the "Marion 3" – Sessions's prosecution of three civil rights workers over what he perceived as voting fraud. As Lani Guinier lays out in her book Lift Every Voice, before 1965 there were "virtually no blacks registered to vote in the 10 western Black Belt counties of Albama". But by the 1980s that had started to change. Through the massive get-out-the-vote efforts of three leaders – including a former aid to Martin Luther King – black voter turnout began to creep toward 80%, and a handful of black legislators were elected. That's where Sessions stepped in, charging three voting rights organisers with voter fraud. All three were quickly acquitted. Sessions's choice to focus on their efforts looked a lot less like good governance and a lot more like voter intimidation." - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

"You promised to support a “complete repeal” of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act and pledged to advocate for legislation that would give same-sex couples the 1,100+ federal rights and benefits we are denied, including the same rights to social security benefits. You said “Federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples.” What of those promises, Mr. President? Your commitment to repeal DOMA has been removed from the White House website." - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

Fantastic letter. Very well written. - Grant Gochnauer

Yes, fantastic letter, well written. It is time to get moving, make appointments. Delegate if you have to! - ‘-.-’ Tutivillus Grift

"'You’re seeing two things here. The light blue line measures paid sick days. This is what you use if you need to take three days off because you have a fever. The dark blue line is paid sick leave. This is what you use if you need to take three months off because you have cancer. Every other country on the list offers at least one. Most offer both. The United States is alone in guaranteeing neither.' Why does this matter? Because sick people without paid sick days go to work anyway, infecting others and increasing the virulence of epidemics. Or, when it comes to things like the common cold, they simply get more people sick, which sucks for them." - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

I just mean that, roughly speaking, the socialist democracies cluster at the top of the graph, the free market democracies at the bottom, as common sense would dictate. - joneilortiz

(image: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images. caption: Pope Benedict XVI speaks during his visit to the Aida refugee camp, with the Israeli separation barrier in the background, near the West Bank city of Bethlehem on May 13, 2009. Pope Benedict XVI called for a Palestinian homeland, urged youths to shun "terrorism" and lamented Israel's wall that towered over his first trip to the West Bank) - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

"As the latest instance of a major media outlet prescribing mass surrender of even the most limited workplace rights, the cover copy for the May 25, 2009 issue of TIME Magazine reads: “Throw away the briefcase: you’re not going to the office. You can kiss your benefits goodbye too. And your new boss won’t look much like your old one. There’s no longer a ladder, and you may never get to retire, but there’s a world of opportunity if you figure out a new path.”" - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

My uncle had this ring that made him invisible. If I could find that ring, I wouldn't have to worry about TPS reports and yearly performance evaluations. Everything I wanted would be mine... - Bill Sodeman

"Posters have recently appeared in London Underground tube stations advertising Israel as a tourist destination. The map on the advert depicts Israel as incorporating the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. Please write to London Underground, the Advertising Standards Agency and CBS Outdoors – the company which manages the poster sites – asking for the removal of these posters, which deliberately deny the existence of Palestine." - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

"As the Obama administration continues to fight the release of some 2,000 photos that graphically document U.S. military abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, an ongoing Spanish investigation is adding harrowing details to the ever-emerging portrait of the torture inside and outside Guantánamo. Among them: "blows to [the] testicles;" "detention underground in total darkness for three weeks with deprivation of food and sleep;" being "inoculated … through injection with 'a disease for dog cysts;'" the smearing of feces on prisoners; and waterboarding. The torture, according to the Spanish investigation, all occurred "under the authority of American military personnel" and was sometimes conducted in the presence of medical professionals." - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

"In a CNN article on “How to keep your job” Tyler Cowen (of Marginal Revolution fame) recommends that you approach your boss and preemptively volunteer yourself for a wage cut. So, even as money keeps flowing to the top, mass media outlets are now recommending that workers volunteer themselves for further wage cuts, all under the name of ‘practical advice’? Could a more deranged, oppressive response to mass robbery possibly be imagined?" - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

This is not a joke - Elián Maricón

BashBack! trashes anti-queer Christian conference in Seattle - Elián Maricón

The change keeps coming - Elián Maricón