Browsing PBH By Articles

‘Mea Culpa’ In The Middle East

Posted on June 6, 2012 in Articles

The Article: Mideast analysts, mea culpa time by Hussein Ibish in Lebanon Now.

The Text: A year and a half into the emergence of a new Middle East in the context of the Arab uprisings, it behooves commentators who have been tracking these events to step back and assess our own evaluations. There’s no point in dwelling on what we think we’ve gotten right. What’s more important is where we can see we have gone wrong, and why. Taking note of these missteps provides valuable lessons for reading ongoing events with greater accuracy.

I’m going to look at several of my own most notable mistakes or rushes to judgment over the past 18 months, and what can be learned from them.

The most obvious of these is the most recent: like most other observers, I was surprised by the first-round results of the Egyptian presidential elections. Towards the end of 2011, I became convinced that former Arab League chief Amr Moussa would be very difficult to beat because of his name recognition, status as a professional politician in a field of relative amateurs, and what I thought would be his ability to garner support from a wide range of constituencies.

Dealing With The Failed War On Drugs

Posted on June 4, 2012 in Articles

The Article: Dealing With The Failed War On Drugs by Amanda Richards in The Speckled Axe.

The Text: After 40 years, the Nixon-initiated War on Drugs has lived up to the promise of its name: families have been displaced, lives and livelihoods have been lost in communities destroyed, fears have amplified and propaganda is now regarded as truth. There is no clear winner and, despite a growing body of evidence that challenges the efficacy of the United States’ current approach to drug use and the widespread global protest against it, there is no real end in sight. How many more years will it take before our society and its leaders acknowledge the facts, dispel the taboos of drug use and decide that enough is enough?

In June 2011, the Global Commission on Drugs released a twenty four-page document that outlines various common misconceptions surrounding the decriminalization of drug use and the societal impact of its continued criminality. The Commission’s panel consisted of nineteen impressive prominent international public figures including the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Prime Minister of Greece and the former Presidents of Colombia, Mexico and Brazil. Their major finding: “The global war on drugs has failed.”

Meanwhile, the US Drug Enforcement Administration, which disregards the Global Commission’s conclusion, uses an obscure tally that includes numbers of arrests, incarcerations, pounds of illicit substances confiscated and the displacement of manufacturing facilities and growth operations as its measuring stick for success. The higher the number, the higher the DEA and US government esteem themselves and their advances on the drug front.

The Power And Problems Of Internet Activism

Posted on May 30, 2012 in Articles

The Article: From SOPA to Cispa: The Power And Problems Of Internet Activism by Ryan Nafziger in The Speckled Axe.

The Text: On January 18, 2012, an already declining piece of legislation under the name of House Bill 3261 was blown out of the sky. Opposition had gone viral. Social media sites were boiling with the same collective anger that Joseph Kony would incite just a few months later. Internet institutions like Wikipedia and Reddit as well as thousands of smaller sites shut down for the day. Google claimed to have collected seven million signatures in opposition. Several of SOPA’s Congressional sponsors quickly withdrew their support.

Just two days later, the bill’s original sponsor, Texas Republican Lamar Smith, pulled the bill from the house floor while acknowledging the concerns about SOPA’s potential impact on free speech and the discourse of information over the Internet. The Internet had won. An army comprised of tweets, profile pictures and status updates had defeated industry giants like the RIAA and MPAA.

Almost four months later, a similar bill sits before the House and I bet you haven’t seen many Facebook status updates about it. That bill is House Bill 3523, or the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (called CISPA). CISPA differs from SOPA in purported aim to stop online security threats instead of online piracy, but its danger is the same. In essence, CISPA places our private information in the hands of government and corporations without due process. If Facebook thinks you’re a security threat, it can take your private information and give it to the government without a search warrant. Thanks to the broad wording of the bill, theft of intellectual property constitutes a security threat. Any illegal music, movies you download – or even that Shepard Fairey Obama poster you were so excited about changing your profile picture back to after these four long years – are potential grounds for the seizure of your information and its sharing between government and corporate intelligence organizations.

In America, Only Some Ideas Are Worth Spreading

Posted on May 26, 2012 in Articles

The Article: In America, Only Some Ideas Are Worth Spreading by Savannah Cox in The Speckled Axe.

The Text: What would you do if an incredibly successful venture capitalist had the audacity to tell you that–despite his extended residency at the top of the US totem pole of wealth and the conventional “wisdom” that surrounds Reagan-initiated “trickle down” economic thought–the wealthy don’t actually create jobs and they need to be taxed more, not only for their own well-being but for that of the middle class and the poor? Furthermore, what if he presented his reasoning (the same kind of off-the-wall, game changing revelations that would get you shunned or scorched by presiding authorities in centuries past) with relevant examples, facts and figures to elucidate his point to a broader audience capable of turning one man’s speech into tangible, national changes?

Given the alarming truth that the American wealth gap is on its way to rivaling the Mississippi River in both width and divisive power, you might think that this would be an idea definitely worth spreading–especially by an organization whose mission is just that. You might also think that this idea, grounded in experience and concern for the welfare of Americans across the board, would transcend the increasingly prickly lines of political ideologies that unfortunately define our time.

You would, however, be wrong. Moreover, you’d never really know how you’d respond to such an idea because it’s been censored for being “too political” and partisan for a public already suffering through the familiar derisiveness and vitriol abundant in presidential election seasons. In this case, the venture capitalist in question is Nick Hanauer, the first non-family investor in Amazon.com and the censoring organization at hand is TED, the geek chic franchise known throughout Internet and international communities for spreading innovative and often contentious ideas to the public via “TED talks.”

The Real Jesus Is In Hiding

Posted on May 25, 2012 in Articles

The Article: Hiding the True Jesus by Howard Bess in Consortium News.

The Text: I grew up as a devout, “red letter” Christian who hung on every word from Jesus. My Baptist church had a heavy influence on me and my faith was focused on making certain that I ended up in heaven. I learned that Jesus died for my sins and I was forever indebted to him.

I believed that the stories that Jesus told were earthly stories with heavenly meaning. To me, Jesus was a teacher of spiritual truth and divine wisdom. Then came seminary, where I was exposed to a different kind of study of the Bible.

It was while I was in seminary that I learned that the Bible is like every other book in that every word, every sentence, every paragraph was written by a human being and in a context. So, everything that is reported about Jesus had a context.