A small bit of good news today:
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has agreed to write off the $3.3bn (£1.89bn) owed to it by all but one of the 20 poorest countries in the world.
While this is a good first step toward ending extreme poverty, we are still a long way from that goal.
Via Richard Hall comes a link to an article about the plight of the people of Zimbabwe this Christmas:
The harsh impact of a crumbling economy, meagre salaries and food shortages will combine to ensure that Zimbabweans have the most miserable Christmas ever. Unemployment is approaching 90 per cent and inflation has topped 500 per cent, and there are now so many zeros on most price tags that calculators, designed for only eight digits, are useless for our daily calculations.
This is one of those situations where, to quote U2, “if you need someone to blame, throw a rock in the air - you’ll hit someone guilty.” Obviously, Mugabe’s strong-arm tactics have destroyed what little existed of his economy prior to 2000.
But that’s not the whole story. For even in 2000, unemployment ran 70 percent. And extreme poverty and this part of Africa are no strangers.
The fact is, the international community shares the blame for tragedies such as those in Zimbabwe, Malawi, and much of sub-Saharan Africa. Until we can finally step up to the plate and end extreme poverty in the world, we condemn the poorest of the world’s poor to live on the knife’s edge between simply living in poverty and starvation.
We should strive to create a world where the terrible decisions of one man (Mugabe) cannot condemn so many to suffering and death.
I always find it particularly curious when a self-identified born-again Christian seems so patently incapable of admitting being wrong, as forgiveness is such a significant part of Christian doctrine. When a Messiah has died for your sins, surely it indicates an expectation that you’ll commit some.
The post is specifically about the fact that it seems that the Bush administration and its supporters seem to refuse to admit ever being wrong. But I felt that this quote was particularly meaningful to just about everyone who falls under the umbrella term “Christian” (myself included).
It’s remarkable that those whose very articles of faith give them the most to gain by admitting their own faults have such a hard time doing so (myself included).
The good news is that we’re about to ban its use. The bad news is that we’re about to accept it as a legitimate means for foreign governments to extract information:
Now, Graham is jettisoning one of the few good provisions in his bill: its ban on the use of evidence gained through torture.
I never thought I would see the day when my country would bless the use of torture by other nations by allowing evidence obtained through torture to be used in court.
Shameful.
Hilzoy, filling in for Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly’s blog, believes the revelation that the President (allegedly) broke the law by ordering warrantless wiretaps is grounds for impeachment:
But I have a high bar, not a nonexistent one. And for a President to order violations of the law meets my criteria for impeachment. This is exactly what got Nixon in trouble: he ordered his subordinates to obstruct justice. To the extent that the two cases differ, the differences make what Bush did worse: after all, it’s not as though warrants are hard to get, or the law makes no provision for emergencies. Bush could have followed the law had he wanted to. He chose to set it aside.
Read the whole post to hear the case for impeachment. Personally, I suspect my bar for impeachment was crossed when the President decided to lie to Congress and the American people about the justification for going to war in Iraq. And when the administration authorized torture. And when members of his administration (almost certainly with his knowledge) decided to out Valerie Plame.
But actively subverting the constitution he is sworn to protect seems to be easier to prove, and pretty much subsumes all of the other grounds for impeachment in any case.
That being said, IANAL, nor a constitutional scholar, and at this point these are just allegations. So we’ll have to wait and see whether this rises to the level of an impeachable offense.
Of course, with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, I guess the point is moot until at least 2006 anyway.
And finally, the thing that gives me the most pause is this: President Cheney.
Okay, so George Bush is only a distant second when it comes to clueless world leaders:
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has courted further controversy by explicitly calling the Nazi Holocaust of European Jewry a “myth”.
Isn’t it comforting to know that the military is spying on us for our own good?
A year ago, at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., a small group of activists met to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high schools. What they didn’t know was that their meeting had come to the attention of the U.S. military.
A secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News lists the Lake Worth meeting as a “threat” and one of more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” across the country over a recent 10-month period.
You know those Quakers. You just can’t trust a pacifist. One minute, they’re turning the other cheek, and the next, they’ve cast aside their entire moral code and have become hardened terrorists!
On a more serious note: who can we fire because of this? Rumsfeld? Cheney? Bush? If we are to have any hope of retaining our democracy, someone must be held accountable.
In about 3 hours, “Tookie” Williams is set to die.
Most of the reasoning around the case to grant Mr. Williams clemency stems from the idea that he’s a “reformed” man. Which appears to be true. He has spent much of his life in prison trying to stop the cycle of gang violence in the country.
But it’s not the reason he should be spared.
The reason he should have been granted clemency was far more simple: despite the fact that he undoubtedly did some horrific things in his younger days (whether or not he was actually guilty of the murders for which he is set to die), the “sacredness of human personality” as Martin Luther King called it, means that no person has the right to determine how that personality should be taken from this earth.
It is for this reason that I subscribe to the concept of the “seamless garment.” Whether it be ending the life of a fetus before its personality has been given much of a chance at all, ending the life of another soldier for the sake of worldly ambitions (even if the ambitions appear noble), or ending the life of one who should rightly be punished for their crimes, we cannot escape the fact that God has breathed life into each of us and only God should be allowed to take that breath away.
Apparently, this administration and the Republicans in Congress have decided that rebuilding New Orleans isn’t such a hot priority after all. Their reason? Those corrupt Louisianans:
Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho) echoed sentiments expressed by many of his colleagues when he insisted recently that every federal dollar sent to Louisiana be strictly monitored.
“Louisiana and New Orleans are the most corrupt governments in our country, and they have always been,” Craig told a newspaper in his home state. “Fraud is in the culture of Iraqis. I believe that is true in Louisiana as well.”
Setting aside the paternalistic, 19th century “White Man’s Burden” tone of this statement, I have just one question for Mr. Craig: What happened to that $9 billion in reconstruction funding for Iraq which was mysteriously “lost” by this administration? Okay, and maybe one more: what about all of those no-bid contracts which resulted in significant overcharges by Dick Cheney’s old firm Halliburton, among others?
I think the Republicans should be careful about pointing the finger, since there are still three pointing back at themselves.
