That’s the Point

What is happening in Iran must be seen as efforts forging a new balance between Islam and democracy. Sullivan thinks:

This will not look like Western democracy, but that’s the point.

June 20, 2009

Today will go down in history as the day the revolution in Iran turned from peaceful to violent. The government brought the violence and the citizens suffered. This video captures it all:

[Update 6/21/09]

Reported:

6:55 PM ET — A bit more on Neda. A blogger apparently in touch with Neda’s family members offers some new details (translated by reader Nima): she was born in 1982, apparently her full name was Neda Agha-Soltan, and she was at the protest with one her professors and several other students. She was, they said, shot by a basiji riding by on a motorcycle. Also, she was apparently buried today at a large cemetery in the south of Tehran. ABC News’ Lara Setrakian writes, “Hearing reports Neda was buried in Behesht Zahra cemetery earlier today, memorial service cancelled on orders from authorities.”

For the Iran Protesters:

“It is absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the revolutionary process with an increasingly critical awareness of their role as subjects of the transformation.”
- Paulo Freire

Freire contends in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, only the oppressed can pull themselves out of oppression; Any help from sympathizers must stop at encouragement or the periphery of action.

John Kerry almost hits this subtle point in his op-ed today.

What are we leaving behind?

Looking at the NYTs 2008 in pictures, I find the pictures of the economy — many of vacant homes — give me chills: are large, empty homes the artifacts we are leaving to be uncovered by the next American society?

Andrew Sullivan’s poetic moment

On Obama’s pick of Rick Warren:

The bitterness endures; the hurt doesn’t go away; the pain is real. But that is when we need to engage the most, to overcome our feelings to engage in the larger project, to understand that not all our opponents are driven by hate, even though that may be how their words impact us. To turn away from such dialogue is to fail ourselves, to fail our gay brothers and sisters in red state America, and to miss the possibility of the Obama moment. (Link)

A tax to make people healthier

It’s a good idea in my eyes: 

Let’s break for a quiz: What was the biggest health care breakthrough in the last 40 years in the United States? Heart bypasses? CAT scans and M.R.I.’s? New cancer treatments?

No, it was the cigarette tax. Every 10 percent price increase on cigarettes reduced sales by about 3 percent over all, and 7 percent among teenagers, according to the 2005 book “Prescription for a Healthy Nation.” Just the 1983 increase in the federal tax on cigarettes saved 40,000 lives per year. (Link)

Kristof goes on to support the proposed NY tax on soft drinks!

Today looks like the Depression of 1873, not 1929

Let’s hope it doesn’t get this bad:

As the panic deepened, ordinary Americans suffered terribly. A cigar maker named Samuel Gompers who was young in 1873 later recalled that with the panic, “economic organization crumbled with some primeval upheaval.” Between 1873 and 1877, as many smaller factories and workshops shuttered their doors, tens of thousands of workers — many former Civil War soldiers — became transients. The terms “tramp” and “bum,” both indirect references to former soldiers, became commonplace American terms. Relief rolls exploded in major cities, with 25-percent unemployment (100,000 workers) in New York City alone. Unemployed workers demonstrated in Boston, Chicago, and New York in the winter of 1873-74 demanding public work. In New York’s Tompkins Square in 1874, police entered the crowd with clubs and beat up thousands of men and women. The most violent strikes in American history followed the panic, including by the secret labor group known as the Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania’s coal fields in 1875, when masked workmen exchanged gunfire with the “Coal and Iron Police,” a private force commissioned by the state. A nationwide railroad strike followed in 1877, in which mobs destroyed railway hubs in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Cumberland, Md. (Link)

Which countries believe in evolution?

What’s the difference?

This happened in 2006.

This happened in 2008. 

Lehigh continues to fight racism in a reactionary cycle. Only when a terrible event occurs does the community respond. The response is mere lip-service to the event, only lasting long enough for students to forget. The events in 2008 will reappear in 2010 and 2012 and 2014 unless we — the whole Lehigh community — become proactive. 

Will it take another Jeanne Clery for Lehigh to change? I hope not.

Africa and Aid