Each week I always end up with more bookmarked links than I end up blogging about. Some of those articles, though, are stuff that shouldn’t be missed. When that happens, its time for another Instahoglets.
Iraq..Iran..its not about the oil - its about which currency the oil is paid for with. This article by Austrian financial expert Tony Straka is a must-read for those seeking to understand modern geopolitics.
US Big Businesses are refusing to bankroll Bush’s immigration reforms until they are certain reforms won’t be hijacked by both right and leftwing hardliner xenophobes. One bit of sense on the subject: “Immigrants aren't being talked about in a very endearing way but we're talking about real good people who are doing what we all are trying to do, which is feed our babies.” As a supporter of international labor and the fight against international poverty I am actually with the corporate bigwigs on this one.
Here’s an illustration of what I mean - a new report by the UN’s Economic and Social Affairs Dept. says that the global gap between rich and poor is now wider than it was a decade ago and wealthy nations have been the main beneficiaries of worldwide economic development. It also said it would be impossible for the 2.8bn people living on less than $2 a day to ever match the consumption levels of the rich.
Oh, and the poverty rate here in the US has risen again for the fourth consecutive year. That George is sure good for us po’folks ain’t he?
A trade dispute between the US and Canada over softwood imports and unfair import tariffs that have so far netted the US over $5 billion prompts an editorial in the Toronto Star: “make every American — and indeed the world — aware there is a price to be paid when a nation refuses to keep its word”.
Just in case you thought the Democratic Party was the only one with a great number of reluctant voters who wished they had a third choice, prominent townhall.com columnist Mark Tapscott urges conservatives to ditch the GOP.
Daniel Dennet, one of the smartest people I ever met ( he ties first place with Richard Dawkins) has an essay entitled “Show Me The Science” in which he sets out the failings of the Intelligent Design lobby in graphic terms. If ID is to be a serious competitor to evolution then it must do what scientific theories do and get down in the trenches and offer details that have testable implications.
To see this shortcoming in relief, consider an imaginary hypothesis of intelligent design that could explain the emergence of human beings on this planet:
About six million years ago, intelligent genetic engineers from another galaxy visited Earth and decided that it would be a more interesting planet if there was a language-using, religion-forming species on it, so they sequestered some primates and genetically re-engineered them to give them the language instinct, and enlarged frontal lobes for planning and reflection. It worked.
If some version of this hypothesis were true, it could explain how and why human beings differ from their nearest relatives, and it would disconfirm the competing evolutionary hypotheses that are being pursued.
We'd still have the problem of how these intelligent genetic engineers came to exist on their home planet, but we can safely ignore that complication for the time being, since there is not the slightest shred of evidence in favor of this hypothesis.
But here is something the intelligent design community is reluctant to discuss: no other intelligent-design hypothesis has anything more going for it.
Excellent stuff from a master of real thinking.
So the extremist US Right isn’t a terrorist threat, you say? Here’s a list of 60 homegrown rightwing terrorist plots uncovered in the 10 years since the April 19, 1995, bombing in Oklahoma City. It’s by no means exhaustive.
And so back to Iraq, where the Jerusalem Post is saying what many seem to wish true and others fear is true whether they wish it or not - “Iraq is not a state anymore”. On Sunday the Observer newspaper argued that “the political process has failed as a result of greed, isolation and partisan use of the constitutional process” and suggested preventing a civil war before trying to draft a new constitution and yesterday its sister paper The Guardian suggested that any new constitutional draft could benefit greatly from the South African model of actually asking the people what they want first. Meanwhile, Chrenkoff thinks its good news that Sunnis are lining up to register so they can vote the current constitutional draft into the trashcan…
All stuff that shouldn’t be missed.
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