The Selfishness of Republican Polticis Apparently Knowns No Bounds

The Republicans are trying to block a senate version of a house bill that would give compensation to rescue workers who suffer long-term health effects from their work on 9/11. This should come as no surprise, for the Republican party has shown, since Obama's election, that its primary concern is not with the wellfare of the United States, but with preventing the president and the Democrats from succeeding with anything on their agenda, lest they actually have tangible achievments to show the American public come election day.

Exhibit A: Preventing the extension of unemployment benefits and comprehensive economic stimulus, despite overwhelming evidence from economists of all stripes that unemployment benefits are among the most stimulative ways to spend government money, and that stimulus is needed
Exhibit B: Republicans who used to support certain policies pre-Obama, started opposing those very policies the minute they came on the Obama agenda
Exhibit C: Trying to un-do regulations passed in response to the economic crisis, meant to prevent abuses by Wall Street, and to protect home-owners
Exhibit D: Insisting on tax-cuts for the wealthy, despite the huge budget deficit and the fact that tax-cuts are ranked as one of the least stimulative way for a government to spend money (or, as the case may be, prevent itself from earning income - for more information, see the various writings of Joseph Stiglitz)

This move by the Republicans however, may be the most disgusting of all. It speaks of an absence of common human decency or any type of Patriotism - this from a party that accuses Obama of not being a real American (whether literally or metaphorically) and presents itself as the patriotic savior of America, magically able to solve all security and military problems, while scouring off the scourge of "illegal aliens" and "un-American" values - apparently, objecting to gay marriage is more American than caring about the lives of American policemen and firemen, and providing them with medical services.

But the blame can not be placed solely on the Republicans' shoulders; The Democrats too, have failed. First of all, Carolyn Maloney was right when she said that the Democrats should have insisted that provisions for 9/11 first responders be included in the tax-cut bill, since the Republicans would not dare oppose tax-cuts, especially when supporting tax-cuts is such a big part of their platform and a major way of attracting voters.

But second of all, the Democrats might propose sensible policies, but they have proved ineffective at playing the game of politics in order to get those policies passed. Voters have every right to be disappointed with the Democrats' ineffectiveness, and unless the Democrats learn how to be more skilled at political manuevering, they are in for an unpleasant wakeup call come 2010. Hopefully, the results of the most recent election will shock them to their senses - yet, so far, if the results of their attempts to pass the 9/11 workmen's health bill is any measure, this hope is ill-placed.

Al Araqib

Today, the New York Times featured an article about a dispute between Bedouins and the Israeli government on Al Araqib. To sum up: The Israeli government repeatedly destroys Bedouin homes, claiming the land belongs to the Israeli State. There are projected plans to build a forest there.

Now, I am a big tree-hugger - but it seems to me that people's homes and livelihoods do take precedence over building a forest in the desert, especially since there are so many other patches of the Israeli desert that can be used. The land may or may not legally be the State of Israel's. It does not matter. If Bedouins are living there, then Israel should continue to allow them to live there, seeing as how it does not currently use the land for anything productive anyway.

This dispute however, speaks to a larger issue: Israel's failure to develop its south desert region (the Negev). It crammed Bedouins into cities that are plagued by poverty, inadequate employment opportunities and inadequate government services. It crammed Sephardi, Ethiopian, and Russian immigrants into cities that are plagued by those same problems, though perhaps on a slightly lesser scale. Israel can not continue to ignore and neglect its Bedouin population, which serves in the army and has proved itself loyal to the State. Nor can it continue to neglect its Sephardi, Ethiopian, and Russian immigrant groups. (For these groups however, the inequality gap is closing slightly, and there has been some progress. Not as much so for the Bedouins.)

So Israel can choose: It can disenfranchise and neglect is Bedouins, and kick them out of their homes, but be within its legal rights. Or it can forgo its legal rights, and instead, take responsibility for the well-being of its Bedouin citizens, and allow them to keep their homes in an unused patch of desert. But whatever it decides, Israel should be asking itself: Does it really need more disenfranchised Arab youths? When will Israel understand that providing social services and employment is in its own self-interest, and the best way to provide security. What is needed is not to force Arabs to take loyalty oaths to Israel - it is to give them a reason to be loyal to Israel by ending discrimination and providing them with employment opportunities and social services.

Why a Nuclear Iran is a Threat to the USA

Recently there have been a lot of articles floating around about why a nuclear Iran is a threat to Israel. I prefer however, to focus on why a nuclear Iran is a threat to the USA. Here are a few reasons, though this list is not all-inclusive.

1. Israel may be the "little Satan" according to the Iranian government, but the USA is still the "big Satan". It is generally a principle in international politics that you don't want a government that calls you Satan running around with nukes. This is especially true if you have troops in the country next-door to said government's state: ie, if you have troops in Iraq.

2. America has many allies who rely on it for protection. Like it or not, Israel is considered a US-ally. If the US is seen as failing to protect said ally by allowing Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, then the US could lose other allies, since it will have proved to those allies that it may not be willing to protect them in times of need, just as it did not protect its ally, Israel, in the case of Iran.

3. The Arab states are terrified of the prospect of a nuclear Iran, and would probably reply by trying to obtain nukes of their own, therefore a) destabilizing the region, leading to increased violence, (and remember, this is a region where the US has troops, and a region the US relies on for oil) b) undermine the non-proliferation goals the US has been striving for since the end of the Cold War. It is generally a rule of thumb that the more nukes the more countries have, the less stable the world is, and the worse off all countries are.

4. Iran has an unstable government; Iran also has a government that is cozy with terror groups like Hezbollah and perhaps Al-Queda of Mesopatamia as well. The region has many terror groups. This leads to two possibilities: 1. The Iranian regime topples, and in the chaos, terror-groups manage to get their hands on the Iranian government's nukes. Or the terrorists stage a take-over of an Iranian government nuclear facility. 2. The Iranian government sells or donates nuclear technology or know-how to a terrorist group. Needless to say, all of these scenarios are dangerous for the US.

5. During the Cold War, there was the concept of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. The theory went as follows: If country A has nukes, but knows that country B has nukes, country A won't nuke country B, because it knows that if it does so, country A will nuke it back, resulting in massive deaths to the residents of country B. Meanwhile, country A is going through the same thought-process as country B, and therefore, neither country will actually use their nuclear weapons. Plug in "USA" as country A, USSR as country B, and the equation is solved. For further explication, watch Dr. Strangelove. The problem with MAD however, is that it assumes that both countries are rational actors, who find nuclear peace a price worthy paying to prevent the massive deaths of themselves and their fellow citizens. Iran however, may not be a rational actor; certain government officials certainly seem to be proponents of a radical Islam that supersedes rationality. Furthermore, the terrorist groups that may gain control of the Iranian government's nukes are not rational: Their motto is to kill civilians of the West, in the name of Islam, even if it means killing themselves in the process. A suicidal group won't refrain from using nukes because they fear destruction - on the contrary, they will pursue their goals despite any destruction that occurs in the process of doing so. MAD only works if the people in control of the nukes are not willing to die for their cause.

These five factors point to some of the dangers a nuclear Iran would pose to the US, dangers that are being largely underestimated and under-reported by the mass media.

Israel, Peace and Gaza: Fragments

1. It is time to acknowledge two basic facts about the Arab-Israeli peace process: 1. Peace has traditionally been done piece-meal 2. Hamas and the PA are two separate governments, representing different geographic areas, and different constituencies, with different cultures.

Peace with Arab states has traditionally been done piece-meal, state by state. No one expected Israel to make peace with Egypt and Jordan at the same time, because they are two separate states. Rather, peace was made -successfully- with each state separately. To demand that Israel wait to make peace with Egypt until it was ready to make peace with Jordan, would have been ridiculous, and prolonged a cycle of violence.

The same approach should be taken to peace between Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, pursuant to fact 2: Namely, that Gaza and the West Bank are de facto separate states already. One of those states, Gaza, continues to condone violence and not recognize Israel's right to exist, while the other state, the West Bank, is making tentative steps towards providing security, and recognizes Israel's right to exist. Thus, to force Israel to make peace with the West Bank only when it is ready to also make peace with Gaza, is merely to prolong a cycle of violence, and is extremely unfair to both Israeli and West Bank Palestinian civilians. Once Israel makes peace with the West Bank, the West Bank can vote on the status of its relationship to Gaza. Once Israel makes peace with Gaza, a referendum can be held in both states for citizens to decide whether they wish to fuse or remain separate political entities. Yet this decision should be left up to the Palestinians themselves. To impose a bi-state (as opposed to tri-state) solution is imperialist, for it is to impose the vision of Western leaders on the region, rather than leaving the decision to the residents themselves. This vision ignores the realities on the ground, realities that were created by the Palestinians themselves, when, in a democratic election, the Gazans chose to vote for Hamas, and the West Bankers chose to vote for Fatah.

The Environment

1. Evolutionary theory claims that species adapt to their environment; perhaps humans are unique in that they also try to shape their environment so that it adapts to their needs, through the use to technology, tools, science, etc. This leads to a relationship in which we both shape and are shaped by our environment. Humans are unique in another way too, however: We are perhaps the only species that actively works to destroy our environment, by over-foresting, destroying rainforests, and drilling for oil in dangerous places, without proper precautions or cleanup plans in case of leakage.

Part of this has to do with the way we are wired: We tend to pursue immediate gratification over long-term goals. Immediate gratification means profit from environmentally harmful practices, despite the long-term dangers: Ultimately, we need a healthy environment to survive. Oil-profits won't do any good when the health problems caused by a damaged environment set in. And as for rain-forests, well, we need trees to provide us with the oxygen that allows us to breathe. Could there ever be enough trees cut down to severely lessen the amount of available oxygen, to the point where there is not enough for the human population? I hope not. But this is a question that industries should be asking themselves before they take the axe.

Part of the problem is that environmental protection demands that we overcome the way evolution wired us (instant gratification-prone) in order to pursue on of the goals that evolution imbued us with: survival of our species. Perhaps this is part of the reason meaningful environmental reform has proven so difficult to implement.

2. The environment and socialism: The US is an extremely capitalistic society, and offers less social programming than EU countries, which also tend to have more environmentally friendly laws than the US. Coincidence? I don't think so.

The companies that damage the environment tend to be companies that put their workers in danger (think of the recent deaths of West Virginia coal-miners and BP oil-workers), that damage resources in the third world, or resources of lower-class people in the Western world, but leave the resources of the wealthy intact, especially since the wealthy tend to be able to afford to pay for better resources than the masses. (One example of this would be bottled water.) Furthermore, the resources being harvested often deprive local people of livelihoods or homes, such as in the case of fishermen affected by the BP spill, or Brazilian Amerindians deprived of homes and livelihoods when the rainforest is cut down.

This damage is all done for the sake of profit. Who is that profit going to? The shareholders. But the major profit of course, is going to the major shareholders - ie the upper class. Thus, environmental damage is the result of capitalistic values that believe that profit is the altar upon which all other considerations must be sacrificed. These values serve an upper class that for the moment can afford to buy itself a healthy lifestyle despite the health damages it inflicts on others, and, empowered by profit, is too reckless to consider the day when money might not be enough to buy health in an ozone-free, tree-free, wildlife-free, world, full of pesticides, fumes, pollution and fossil fuels.

Working Mothers

A recent New York Times Article reveals that women who have jobs report happier marriages. There can be many reasons for this fact, but I would like to posit a theory, one that I believe holds true for many - though not all - families with stay-at-home mothers:

The children grow closer with the mother than the father, merely due to the extreme amount of time being spent with the mother in comparison with the father. This leads to competition between parents for the children's affection, as the father looks for ways to make up for the time-gap, perhaps through many gifts/monetary offerings, perhaps by being more lenient/a pushover. Meanwhile, the mother often feels the need to prove her closeness to the children, since a) that is the purpose for which she gave up her career b) this is proof of her ability to be a good homemaker, and is her major source of self-validation in a career's absence c) she is sensitive about her inability to provide the children with monetary support, and must compensate with emotional support. Proving she provides this support is proving that she contributes a lot to her family despite not contributing at all financially.

At the same time, mothers may grow either resentful of their children for being the obstacles to their careers, or overly attached to their children, since they are the major source of meaning in the lives of their mother's now that career, which can be a major source of meaning and self-fulfillment, has been taken away.

This scenario is not true of all families with stay-at-home moms, many of which are happy families. But the stay-at-home mom scenario has many potential ways to lead to a very unhealthy family dynamic, and is far from the ideal that anti-feminists would have us believe.

I advocate family values; I believe a family is happiest when each parent is allowed to pursue a path to self-fulfillment that enables them to be a better parents. Some mothers and fathers may find that path to be through being a stay-at-home or part-time working parent, while some may find it by having a full-time career. But when society encourages flexibility in terms of how the work - providing for the family's financial needs, parenting-work, and household chores - it is the family who benefits. Happy parents are better parents.