Category Archives: politics

Medicine and Sustainability

Two important stories that will make sense to all of you, but specifically to those “I wanna be a doctor” folks among us.  As you’ll learn in the California story, doctors get paid by the task — office visit, exam, surgery, etc.  This is not sustainable given where health care may be headed; it’s certainly not beneficial to the consumer.   Also as you’ll hear, given the cost of medical school and the loans MD’s have to pay back after graduation, specialization in the system drives doctors away from where they are indeed needed — primary care.

In California, Facing Down a Family Physician Shortage

In another story that shows us how wonderful we are, this is concerns Global Health.  In fact, this link will take you to several stories concerning Global Health — cholera perhaps spreading to the DR and Miami, organ trafficking, and a global food crisis.

As you ponder your last “mini” essays, think about some of these challenges.

The Harry Potter Alliance

This, according to the famous Henry Jenkins, media scholar at MIT, could be the way the next wave of activists gets nurtured.  Jenkins calls this “Avatar Activism.”

About 100,000 Harry Potter fans have been mobilized by HPA for causes including marriage equality, genocide prevention and literacy. They raised enough money to send five cargo planes to Haiti bearing medical supplies after the earthquake there, and they’ve bought thousands of books for libraries in Rwanda and the Mississippi Delta.

Harry Potter: Boy Wizard … And Real Life Activist? addresses what may be an evolving phenomenon around activism.   Reading this, I am reminded of Plato’s Republic and how he warned that the poet is a threat to the State. I’m wondering whether this new form of narrating could be a place for storytelling for a new generation?

Robert Moses and Majora Carter – Terrible Infrastructure and Environmental Justice

I had an interesting discussion with my architecture professor, James Butler, who introduced me to the source of New York’s horrible infrastructure in low income areas. Robert Moses, who is seen as a savior to residents of Westchester County, Rockland County and Long Island, pushed for the construction of major freeways throughout NYC. One of his projects, the Cross-Bronx Expressway, abruptly cut through the South Bronx, demolishing countless apartments and displacing over 600,000 working class people on a month’s notice. Since Moses was well-connected with the upper-class and was also backed up by Master’s from Oxford and a fancy PH.D from Columbia, he neglected the voice of the neighborhoods he destroyed and just let business dominate. My professor states “Moses was so politically powerful, that all he needed was to find the most talented architectures, and manipulate them to fullfil his projects.”

Another point about Moses is that his environmental projects, i.e Riverside Park, East River Park and Central Park were reserved for areas where mostly the upper-class lived. Although willing to destroy and increase car pollution in countless neighborhoods for highways, he never decided to place a pool or a park in Hunts Point or Bed-Stuy.

Also,

I also found an interesting interview with Majora Carter. Addressing the same tensions, Carter states the reasons why environmental concerns in low income areas are inevitable. Her point express how corps can still profit by engaging in projects that equalize environmental sustainability in all neighborhoods.

Check it out. It was intriguing to listen to, and they typed-up the interview if you just want to read through the ideas.

Edit 11/16/10 : Her interview basically reiterates the points in Cooper’s essay which we read today. Thanks Cooper for introducing us to Majora Carter’s ideas.

For those of you driving back home for Thanksgiving, think about the cities/towns you pass by. Is it evident that infrastructure has cut through low income areas near you? Please share.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/22/neither_the_destruction_of_the_9th – link to  Carter interview.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses

http://gothamist.com/2007/01/25/caro_gets_snubb.php

Pic of the Cross Manhattan Expressway Moses designed.

“There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”  – Johann Wolfgang

Best,

Frederic

Who Will Stand Up to the Superrich?

Frank Rich wrote an interesting article, today, in The New York Times, Who Will Stand Up to the Superrich?

Rich tells us that Americans don’t hate the rich; in some cases even admire the rich.  The wealthy who lost elections, he goes on, also provided jobs for people.  Rich, though, tells us that we should worry about another kind of rich American, the unseen:

The wealthy Americans we should worry about instead are the ones who implicitly won the election — those who take far more from America than they give back. They were not on the ballot, and most of them are not household names. Unlike Whitman and the other defeated self-financing candidates, they are all but certain to cash in on the Nov. 2 results. There’s no one in Washington in either party with the fortitude to try to stop them from grabbing anything that’s not nailed down.

This is serious because a democracy requires an informed citizenry; however, if this citizenry can’t see, we therefore aren’t ever sure where ideas and their motivations come from, thus trust suffers a serious blow.

As Rich suggests, “The bigger issue is whether the country can afford the systemic damage being done by the ever-growing income inequality between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else, whether poor, middle class or even rich.” Are we prepared to live in a country where the evidence — physical and otherwise — will uncover an abyss between the superrich and rich and the working class, and by working class I mean, as is evident in Rich’s column, people earning less than $200,000 and below? (Believe me, this isn’t a lot of money)

What happens in this world, this “new normal,” as we like to say, is that we lose our narrative, we can’t trust it; we also begin to sense that perhaps it’s never exited. Rich says, “That burden is inflicted not just on the debt but on the very idea of America — our Horatio Alger faith in social mobility over plutocracy, our belief that our brand of can-do capitalism brings about innovation and growth, and our fundamental sense of fairness. Incredibly, the top 1 percent of Americans now have tax rates a third lower than the same top percentile had in 1970.” The entire American concept is Romantic — it’s a romantic story that grows out of Enlightenment thinking.  The trick, actually, is to reach for the Romantic sense of authenticity that shuns aristocratic values for real experience but never quite really getting there; this keeps us going or moving towards a vision of what’s real, what’s truthful. In my mind, this is what Rich is pointing to — the erosion of this Romance with the real, the lived experience, the authentic self and the journey towards that self.

I read Rich’s editorial as an explanation of the law of unintended consequences — that is, as the rich, those unseen ones especially, continue to garner more of our resources to sustain their lives, we, the workers of America, begin to realize that we’re in fact working to sustain that small percentage of citizens that reap the rewards of our labors.  Thus, a percentage, an increasingly larger percentage of our value — our worth — is determined, according to Rich, by people we don’t know and people who are pulling at strings we don’t see.

How do we work through this? What do we have to do to better understand our roles in the world of labor (yet to come for you)?  How does Rich make you feel?  What is the relationship between Rich’s editorial and McKibben’s Eaarth?

A Man Like Christopher Hitchens Doesn’t Come Around Too Often

A Man Like Christopher Hitchens Doesn’t Come Around Too Often

Christopher Hitchens is an exceptional and highly controversial writer. He has authorized many books including god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Why Orwell Matters, and The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. He contributes regularly to Vanity Fair and Slate. After being recently diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus Charlie Rose arranged an interview with him to look back on his life. Hitchens led a bohemian existence as a writer. It is only relatively recently that he has not been living pay-check to pay-check. Friendship, writing, alcohol, cigarettes, sex and books defined his lifestyle. Despite this outward appearance as an indulgent intellectual he is a brave and humble man. Rose pointed out his courage, loyalty and consistency displayed over the years. Hitchens has put himself in numerous potentially career-ending and life-ending situations. Rose asked if he could summate his life as a fight for freedom, to which Hitchens modestly dismissed as a grandiose claim. But Rose is right. His life really has been a fight for freedom.

Htichens’ father was a navy commander. Like George Orwell – whom he wrote a book about – Hitchens did not like the empire or the armed service, but was brought up under its ethics. As a boy he emulated the flinty virtues of duty and courage, and continues to today. He said he felt honored to have been a friend of Salman Rushdie. The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling on all Muslims to kill Rusdie because of his blasphemous book The Satanic Verses.  Hitchens passionately fought for his friend and continues to fight for free expression. Since then has appeared on numerous news and talk shows defending the Danish cartoonist. Hitchens admires Tony Blair despite his unpopularity when he takes risks for points of principle. Blair saved Sierra-Lionne and smashed the RUF, which effectually prevented another Rwanda. He respects Blair when he said ‘we cannot coexist with totalitarian ideologies’. As a result of this openness Blair was pursued with defamation and slander.

Hitchens is a man of principle. Critics have attacked Hitchens for his apparently sudden shift in politics to supporting the Iraq war. He explained that his support of the Iran-Iraq invasion should have been expected; “the one thing I have been is consistently anti-totalitarian”. He was maintaining his loyalty to the Iraqi-Kurdish opposition to Hussein when they were being massacred. In fact, in many of his public appearances the Kurdish flag can be seen on his lapel.  The theocratic dictatorship in the Middle East is an amalgam of everything Hitchens opposes: fascism, genocide, totalitarianism and theocracy. According to Hitchens, the one-party state is a fantasy. The utopian idea that humans can be hammered into another compulsory state cannot be brought about. Only misery is caused by the attempt.

Hitchens still defends the Iran-Iraq invasion. Saddam Hussein was measurable distance from nuclear weaponry and “if a fight was picked I’d rather it be on our terms than theirs”. Hussein’s goal was to complete the national outline of Iraq and Kuwait was the missing province. To say the very least he was not pleased when Saddam Hussein was in power. The war allowed an attempt at a federal constitution. Disputes between Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish would have been solved at the electoral level. The hope was for Iraq to control its own resources, have free press, and create Kurdish autonomy.

Hitchens is an extraordinary man in many ways; he once said his daily intake of alcohol was enough to kill or stun the average mule. Joking aside, the virtues shown by Christopher Hitchens are truly worth emulating. His courage, enthusiasm and dedication are inspiring. Vanity Fair still sees articles written by him despite all his time spent in recovery and chemotherapy.  “I’m leaving the party earlier than I’d like”. This is the side of ‘The Hitch’ we love. We know that he wants to be out there right now.

Here is the interview: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11168

In Denial of Climate Change

In this editorial, In Denial of Climate Change, we learn about a perspective that’s being taken by some Republican candidates.

The candidates are not simply rejecting solutions, like putting a price on carbon, though these, too, are demonized. They are re-running the strategy of denial perfected by Mr. Cheney a decade ago, repudiating years of peer-reviewed findings about global warming and creating an alternative reality in which climate change is a hoax or conspiracy.

This is a perspective that’s not uncommon among many people across the USA. I wonder, then, what we have to do to demonstrate that we, indeed, have affected — and continue to affect — Nature?

These elections (November) and this mediated hype without debate comes at a time when we’re witnessing the questioning  the “value,” “worth” and significance of the Humanities in colleges and universities.  For instance, there is a debate, ongoing, in Do Colleges Need French Departments.

In her response, Martha Naussbum argues that,

Cuts in the humanities are bad for business and bad for democracy. Even if a nation’s only goal were economic prosperity, the humanities supply essential ingredients for a healthy business culture.

Nations such as China and Singapore, which previously ignored the humanities, are now aggressively promoting them, because they have concluded that the cultivation of the imagination through the study of literature, film, and the other arts is essential to fostering creativity and innovation. They also have found that teaching critical thinking and argumentation (a skill associated with courses in philosophy) is essential in order to foster healthy debate inside a business world that might too easily become complacent or corrupt.

We in the U.S. are moving away from the humanities just at the time that our rivals are discovering their worth. But a healthy business culture is not all that life in America is about.

What might be the connections between Republican rejection of man-made climate change, the media hype without debate or dialog, and the willingness of citizens to accept the notion that climate change is happening — and has happened — outside our influence?

What Democracy?

Following our discussion on Thursday, defining terms — Democracy, Socialism, Communism, Capitalism and The Yankees — several parallel stories have appeared that suggest the struggle and the tension we discovered in our exercise, in our discussion.

Please examine these, carefully, and again per group (each group, except one, still is behind and has to do the Scott Page post), determine HOW these stories define Democracy/Capitalims/Us and HOW these stories parallel Empire of Illusion.

The first story is from Terry Gross’s Fresh Air, ” ‘Citizens United’ Ruling Opened Floodgates on Groups’ Ad Spending.”

The next 2 are not stories, but rather, commentaries.  First, Bob Herbert, writing for the New York Times, in Policy at its Worst, tells us that, “We can’t put the population to work, or get the kids through college, or raise the living standards of the middle class and the poor. We can’t rebuild the infrastructure or curb our destructive overreliance on fossil fuels.”

The next opinion, also from the Times, is by  Charles M. Blow, High Cost of Crime.  Here, Blow informs us that, “Our approach to this crime problem for more than two decades has been the mass incarceration of millions of Americans and the industrializing of our criminal justice system. Over the last 25 years, the prison population has quadrupled. This is a race to the bottom and a waste of human capital. A prosperous country cannot remain so by following this path.”  Take a look at how much a single murder costs — then ask yourself: why do we incarcerate more people than anyone else in the industrial world?

The last story, which parallels Hedges’ chapter, “The Illusion of Wisdom,” and written by the indefatigable Camille Paglia, was sent to me by Izzy Ocampo.  In “Revalorizing the Trades,” Paglia asks, “what if a student wants a different, less remunerative or status-oriented but more personally fulfilling career?”  She responds to her question, saying that, “There is little flexibility in American higher education to allow for alternative career tracks.”

In a moment, Paglia sounds a lot like Hedges:

Jobs, and the preparation of students for them, should be front and center in the thinking of educators. The idea that college is a contemplative realm of humanistic inquiry, removed from vulgar material needs, is nonsense. The humanities have been gutted by four decades of pretentious postmodernist theory and insular identity politics. They bear little relationship to the liberal arts of broad perspective and profound erudition that I was lucky enough to experience in college in the 1960s.

Examine each of the stories and the editorials, then discuss, online, how all this fits our notion of the struggle for democracy, our struggle for the truth?

Will the Environment Survive Peace in the Middle East?

I attended the lecture given by Prof. Alon Tal of Ben Gurion University on Wednesday.

Below is the link to the recording of the lecture, and my notes from it.

Will the Environment Survive Peace in the Middle East

Professor Tal spoke about the prevalence of transboundary pollution, regional challenges in regards to resources, discussed the importance of environmental issues in peace talks. He is optimistic about the future of the region and emphasized the role of civil society and US involvement in peace talks.

Some (perhaps) Depressing Updates

Panel Blasts Government On Gulf Oil Spill Response

October 7, 2010
A preliminary report released Wednesday by the federal commission investigating the BP oil spill blames the Obama administration for misrepresenting “the amount and fate of the oil” in the Gulf of Mexico.

Scientists and Soldiers Solve a Bee Mystery

October 6, 2010
Since 2006, 20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States alone have suffered “colony collapse.” Suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to genetically modified food.

Obama talks green, GOP talks freeze

October 2, 2010
Wind, solar and other clean energy technologies produce jobs and are essential for the country’s environment and economy, President Barack Obama said in promoting his administration’s efforts.

The president used his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday, a month away from congressional elections, to charge Republicans with wanting to scrap incentives for such projects.