Bill Clinton on the Path to Peace

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Politics

I didn’t realize until I read this piece on Salon Magazine how much I missed the man

Salon: The path to peace

Our security policy should include five major elements:

First, we should support President Bush and our military in finishing the job of getting Osama bin Laden and the other al-Qaida leaders out of Afghanistan.

Second, we must do everything we can to end the North Korean nuclear missile program. This is a very big deal: The North Koreans may not be able to grow enough food to feed their people, but they are world-class missile builders and they sell missiles to our adversaries.

During my administration, we succeeded in ending North Korea’s nuclear program and its testing of long-range missiles. At the end of my second term, we came close to an agreement to end its missile program entirely. The key to the final agreement was to be a presidential visit to North Korea. I was willing to go, but in the last few weeks of my administration we had to focus all our energies on the apparent chance to achieve a Middle East peace agreement. I decided not to risk this chance by taking a trip that would have had to include South Africa, China, and Japan.

I remain convinced that an end can be negotiated to the North Korean program if the Bush administration makes it a high priority.

Third, we must constrain the production and distribution of chemical, biological and small-scale nuclear weapons. We know that Saddam Hussein is a continuing concern because his laboratories are busy. His military is much weaker than it was at the time of the Persian Gulf War, but the threat of his labs is real. It is not as immediate as the need to restart the Middle East peace process and stop the violence there, and it may not require an invasion, but it must be addressed.

Fourth, we should increase the capacity of our friends to deal with terror. I support what President Bush is doing to help President Gloria Arroyo in the Philippines. I also believe Bush is right to broaden the uses of our aid to Colombia, in order to save the oldest democracy in Latin America from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. The FARC are, in fact, terrorists in the service of drug traffickers who are trying to make Colombia the world’s first narco-state.

We should also support our friends in Africa who are trying to organize themselves into coherent societies. One of the best ways is to continue funding the Africa Crisis Response Initiative. Launched during my administration, this program provides U.S. support for a mixed African military force that can go wherever it is needed, so that Africans can be their own peacekeepers and deal with their own terrorists and tribal conflicts. I hope the Bush administration will not cut funding for this program.

Fifth, we have to improve domestic defenses and cooperation. I support the creation of a new Department of Homeland Security as long as it has the authority to keep all the related agencies in close cooperation and it has immediate access to all intelligence.

More partners, fewer terrorists. In addition to these five defensive steps, it is critical to our new foreign and security policy framework that we have a vision, as our predecessors did after the Second World War, for building a better world with more partners and fewer terrorists.

The guiding principle of this reordered world comes directly from the Third Way philosophy: Empowerment, opportunity and responsibility.

Continue ReadingBill Clinton on the Path to Peace

Overview of Changes to Legal Rights

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Politics

In addition to the people we lost at the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon a year ago, we’ve lost some things that are also fundamentally important to our nation. We are no long a free country… our basic rights as Americans have been eroded in the name of “security” when in reality our president seems to be attempting to overthrow our democracy and create a dictatorship. The most important values we have as a country are gone, not at the hands of Osama bin Laden, or of terrorists, but at the hands of the Terrorist who sits in the Oval Office today, a man who arrived there not because he was elected but because he stole the seat.
Overview of Changes to Legal Rights — By The Associated Press
September 5, 2002, 11:44 AM EDT
Some of the fundamental changes to Americans’ legal rights by the Bush administration and the USA Patriot Act following the terror attacks:
* FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION: Government may monitor religious and political institutions without suspecting criminal activity to assist terror investigation.
* FREEDOM OF INFORMATION: Government has closed once-public immigration hearings, has secretly detained hundreds of people without charges, and has encouraged bureaucrats to resist public records requests.
* FREEDOM OF SPEECH: Government may prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation.
* RIGHT TO LEGAL REPRESENTATION: Government may monitor federal prison jailhouse conversations between attorneys and clients, and deny lawyers to Americans accused of crimes.
* FREEDOM FROM UNREASONABLE SEARCHES: Government may search and seize Americans’ papers and effects without probable cause to assist terror investigation.
* RIGHT TO A SPEEDY AND PUBLIC TRIAL: Government may jail Americans indefinitely without a trial.
* RIGHT TO LIBERTY: Americans may be jailed without being charged or being able to confront witnesses against them.
READ MY LIPS MR. BUSH: NO WAR WITH IRAQ

Continue ReadingOverview of Changes to Legal Rights

Lost U.S. city found as lake dries up

Lost U.S. city found as lake dries up” All I can say is… cool.

There’s apparently an old town under Geist Reservoir here in Indianapolis, too. On one of the online map companies, if you search for Geist, they still have a label for Germantown appearing in the center of the lake. I’ll endeavor to find the link to it.

Continue ReadingLost U.S. city found as lake dries up

Art Nouveau

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Art

Just collecting ideas about Art Nouveau for a new web design project I’m doing.
Anatomy of an Exhibition – Art Nouveau, 1890-1914
Art Nouveau… the movement, the styles
Art Nouveau Ceramic Tiles
New York Museums Alphonse Mucha
Alphonse Mucha
Alphonse Mucha, l’apog de l’Art Nouveau
Art Periods in France: ART NOUVEAU
Art Nouveau Fonts from the Scriptorium
Art Nouveau Architecture
Art Nouveau Background
Art Lex on Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau Architecture

Continue ReadingArt Nouveau

schadenfreude

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Brain Food

It took them an entire study to realize that schadenfreude (glee at the misfortune of others) happens when people resent those who have privileges without working for or deserving them, and those privileged people suddenly fall from grace. I would have thought that was self-evident.

I have to take issue with one paragraph that’s totally wrong: “You will envy more a colleague of yours who makes a thousand dollars more a year than you will a C.E.O. who makes a million dollars more than you,” he said. “We also care about famous people. They are symbols to us.”

Ahem. That’s total bull-crap. I’d be happy for the person I know and annoyed at the C.E.O, not be envious of him. Unless of course the colleague of mine turned out to have made the $1,000 in a totally unethical or undeserved way. And the C.E.O I would probably assume made the million in a undeserved way, unless they had some really creative idea that the built their own company on. Then I’d probably admire them.

And I frankly don’t give a rat’s hiney-end about famous people. Screw ’em. They do, in the article, point out that we tend to think of celebrities as people who are a part of our lives, and I think that’s true, in some ways, with some celebrities. I think the only famous person I ever truly wanted to meet was Princess Diana, just because I think we would have gotten along well.

Continue Readingschadenfreude