Category: philosophy & politics

Europe’s Ailing Social Model: Facts & Fairy-Tales

Europe’s Ailing Social Model: Facts & Fairy-Tales | The Brussels Journal
Europe’s social disaster is unfolding while the rest of the world is booming at its fastest rate in three decades. Paradoxically, the Old Europe of the West must now learn from the New Europe of the East, where after years of disastrous socialism, low and simple flat taxes are being introduced, luring investors from all over the world. The higher the tax level, the lower the incentives to make productive contributions to society. The higher the fiscal burden, the more resources flow from the productive sector to the ever more inefficient government apparatus.

My Ideal War

My Ideal War – How the international community should have responded to Bush’s September 2002 U.N. speech. By Christopher Hitchens
Although some early supporters of Saddam’s ouster have cut and run, Christopher Hitchens has stuck with the program. Here is his pre-invasion justification for why the dogs of war needed to be loosed on Saddam. Here he suggests that the United Nations just get on with it. On the eve of the invasion, he spelled out what could happen if the United States did not invade. Hitchens dismissed an article that claimed Saddam tried to make nice with Washington right before the invasion. In late 2003, he renewed his commitment to the war. Just when opponents of the war were beginning to gloat, Hitchens said, “Not so fast.” He’s even admitted to a few misguided ideas of his own. Two years into the invasion he explained why “withdraw” is a four-letter word. In January he had a hunch that al-Qaida might be the ones doing the cutting and running.

Advance and Retreat

TIME Europe Magazine: Advance and Retreat — Mar. 27, 2006

The headline last Friday in the French business newspaper Les Echos: “Is France ungovernable?” In countries where democracy is a recent innovation, street protests and the ballot box coexist as rival sources of legitimacy: People vote, but also demand the right to reverse the outcome later if they change their minds. Thailand and the Philippines both have been wracked by protests in recent weeks by people demanding that the leaders they elected go.

France is hardly a novice at democracy. But, forged by the Revolution of 1789 and their national myths, the French still embrace rebellion as a favorite political tool — even when, as is currently the case, the aim is to resist, not promote, change. Street protesters in France won’t bring down an elected president — as protestors in Manila did in 2001 and are seeking to do again now. But they can make or break a wannabe.

“Disorder, that is the disease of the French,” said Charles de Gaulle, who tried to keep the malady in check with the establishment in 1958 of the quasi-monarchical presidential system that is still in place. “I don’t believe we will ever manage to cure it.”

A Sharp Debate Erupts in China Over Ideologies

A Deabte
BEIJING, March 11 — For the first time in perhaps a decade, the National People’s Congress, the Communist Party-run legislature now convened in its annual two-week session, is consumed with an ideological debate over socialism and capitalism that many assumed had been buried by China’s long streak of fast economic growth.

Let the exchange of trade and ideas with Iran begin.

Christopher Hitchens at his usual provocative best(Click here for the full article)

So, picture if you will the landing of Air Force One at Imam Khomeini International Airport. The president emerges, reclaims the U.S. Embassy in return for an equivalent in Washington and the un-freezing of Iran’s financial assets, and announces that sanctions have been a waste of time and have mainly hurt Iranian civilians. A new era is possible, he goes on to say. America and the Shiite world have a common enemy in al-Qaida, just as they had in Slobodan Milosevic, the Taliban, and the Iraqi Baathists. America is home to a large and talented Iranian community. Let the exchange of trade and people and ideas begin! There might perhaps even be a ticklish-to-write paragraph, saying that America is not proud of everything it is has done in the past—most notably Jimmy Carter’s criminal decision to permit Saddam to invade Iran.

Europeans to counter Google print project

Europeans to counter Google print project – Tech News & Reviews – MSNBC.com
the first culture war in cyberspace. I read this article about Google’s ambitious project to digitize several libraries and the European response to it. I think it speaks volumes about the differences between our cultures. America puts books online because a private corporation figured this is a service people want, and it would be a good way to make a profit. European heads of state decide to make this a giant public works project, and they do it because they don’t want an ‘Anglo-American’-centric online library which offers the literature people desire. I like how the article mentions French cinema as if it is a success story about how government intervention can save the arts. Which project do you think will succeed?

Don’t mis-underestimate Dubya – Indian Express

Don’t mis-underestimate Dubya
Interesting Op-Ed perspective in the “Indian Express” from a member of the growing entreprenuerial class situated in the largest democracy of the world.

The Bush family has an uncanny knack of knowing where the future will happen, says Jaithirth Rao

And from the NY Times comes this about the 2 million Indian American citizens:

These issues are of intense interest to Americans of Indian origin, who are the country’s fastest-growing ethnic group, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, whose data shows they are far better educated and wealthier than the average U.S. citizen. …

According to figures compiled from census data by the U.S.-India Political Action Committee, Indian-Americans own 15 percent of Silicon Valley start-up firms, constitute 10 percent to 12 percent of U.S. medical doctors and control about 40 percent of the American hotel sector.
One in 10 Americans of Indian origin are millionaires, while the $60,093 median income of Indian-American families in 2000 was far above the U.S. average of $38,885. They post similarly striking educational statistics.