2004080413, originally uploaded by richard_munden.
Amsterdam. The Red Light District. Prostitutes, Porn shows. Marijuana Museum. Legalized drugs. A world renown den of inequity. How does a culture that permits such abominations survive?
Quite well actually. (Read on …)
It looks like the Congress is going to pass a stimulus package (details to be determined) that gives American consumers about $150 billion dollars to do what they do best - consume. Why do we need this and how did the economy come to be is dire straits to begin with?
It seems to me that our problems are due to debts and deficits. The US savings rate has dropped below zero. As a nation, we spend every cent we earn plus a few more we borrow. Many have financed this prolonged binge by borrowing against the inflated values of their homes. The rest seem to have simply racked up enormous amounts of credit card debt at astronomical interest rates.
The US has also been running serious trade deficits for the past several decades. We seem to have lost our competitiveness in the world markets for most products other than entertainment and subsidized agricultural commodities. I may speculate on how this happened in a future article.
Last but not least, the federal government has been running huge deficits even by their own questionable accounting methods for the past 7 years. Shortfalls must be covered somehow and the two methods available are borrowing and printing more money. The government cannot borrow from Americans, we already spent everything we got plus some. (Read on …)
The climate debate drags on. The latest twist is to debate whether a scientific consensus exists or not. The good thing about science is that there is always room for new evidence and new theories to explain the evidence. In the case of global warming, there seems to no longer be much question about whether the Earth is warming, just why. Is it the result of human activities, increased solar radiation, volcanic activity, or just part of a natural cycle? We may never know. We don’t have a control Earth were we can change the variables one at a time to see which has the greatest impact. Well, I have heard a theory that there is an identical Earth on the opposite side of the Sun, where we can’t see it but…
So, the theories that greenhouse gases are contributing to global warming may or may not be correct. What should people do in each case?
THE PROBLEM:
I was wondering about the complex issue of where American Jews should stand in regards to the 1915 genocide of 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Turks; Israel’s very good current military and economic relationship with Turkey; America’s military vulnerability if the Turk’s withdraw their use of Turkey as a staging area for resupplying our troops in Iraq and how can we demand the world must remember our slaughtered families and not acknowledge the Armenians frustration, anger and pain with little international recognition of their people’s losses?
Personally, I find it to be a conundrum because of the vastly evolved current circumstances from what they were 92 years ago. All positions are effectively, correct.
If we antagonize the Turks, everybody loses and the benefit to the Armenians is something that can’t be measured. If we ignore the Armenians, it undermines the Jews’ moral foundation that the World should recognize and deplore all national or racial, etc. slaughter. The debate is dividing Jews from Jews and all sorts of other combinations in this country.
POSSIBLY, A SOLUTION:
Not that anyone asked me, or anything like that, but after deliberating about the Turkey / Armenia nexus, I decided that the only viable way out (if I was in a position to mediate) that would leave the US –Turkey relationship intact and all that that entails and not risk American Jews causing a rift between Israel and Turkey by their support of a congressional resolution condemning Turkey for genocide in 1915, would be to drop the House resolution as a sop to Turkey, disengage the US Government from any further criticism of our current and strategic ally and have top US leaders meet in a bi-partisan effort to assuage the politically powerful and wealthy Armenian/American community.
Then what? (Read on …)
I just came across a great 15 minute video by Dan Dennett titled “Ants, terrorism and the awesome power of memes.” For me it tied together in a scientific way, a number of concepts brought out in “The Power of Nightmares” and by Neal Stephenson’s book “Snow Crash.”
Memes can be thought of as infectious ideas. Mr. Dennett compares the role of memes in the interaction of cultures to the role of germs as described by Jared Diamond in “Guns, Germs and Steel.” He suggests that we try to reduce the virulence of our memes in an attempt to protect cultures to which they are toxic.
We often try to protect endangered species because we believe that biological diversity is good (another meme). Since I also believe that cultural diversity is a good thing, it should follow that I would want to protect other cultures from the potentially toxic memes of my own culture. On the other hand, I do not want to be shielded from foreign ideas, I just don’t want them forced on me. (Read on …)
The Power of Nightmares is a 2005 BBC documentary. To my knowledge, it has never aired on U.S. TV. It is a three part (3 hours) series that traces the current Islamic Fundamentalism and Neoconservatism movements to their origins in the 1940s and 1950s and shows how they have become intertwined. If it has become more difficult to make people believe in ideologies, it has become easier to make them fear the future.
I highly recommend you take the time to view these three videos.