Month: June 2005

unintended consequences

I thought I’d missed my opportunity to post this because Newsweek starts charging for content after only a week, but luckily the author himself has archived columns available for free on his own site. I’m talking about Fareed Zakaria’s article in the June 27, 2005 (I know, I know, I’m running a bit behind here) Newsweek suggesting that US sanctions keep unwanted governments in power, even help consolidate their power, while free and open trade and discourse often result in a changing of the guard.

For almost five decades the United States has put in place a series of costly policies designed to force Cuba to dismantle its communist system. These policies have failed totally. Contrast this with Vietnam, also communist, where Washington has adopted a different approach, normalizing relations with its former enemy. While Vietnam remains a Leninist regime in many ways, it has opened up its society, and the government has loosened its grip on power, certainly far more than that of Fidel Castro. For the average person in Libya or Vietnam, American policy has improved his or her life and life chances. For the average person in Iran or Cuba, U.S. policy has produced decades of isolation and economic hardship.

How To Change Ugly Regimes

I’m going where I’m going to

I’m off to Virginia Beach for the weekend to visit family and THE OCEAN. Mmm, the ocean.

I’ll miss Gene Hosey at Poetry Thursday as a result, but if you haven’t seen Gene I highly recommend going to hear him. I’ve heard him described as a lion, and I can’t come up with a better way to put it.

Anyway, peace out, stay cool, all that.

who will play you?

This poorly titled New York Times Opinion piece by David Brooks lends an interesting slant to the Woodward & Bernstein legend.

Watergate has become a modern Horatio Alger story, a real-life fairy tale, an inspiring ode for mediacentric college types – about the two young men who found exciting and challenging jobs, who slew the dragon, who became rich and famous by doing good and who were played by Redford and Hoffman in the movie version.

crisis of doubt

Have you ever been somewhere you probably shouldn’t be, then seen something you probably shouldn’t see, and then need to tell everyone about it?

Well, I hate to admit it, but tonight I just had to go and check out my ex-boyfriend’s blog, and I had to get all intrigued by the quote he’d recently posted. That let me to google Andrew Boyd, which eventually led to the discovery of Skeptical Mysticism.

“I am One with a God I do not believe in.”

activist judges?

The Supreme Court announced today that federal laws governing marijuana trump state laws. The court’s not saying that it agrees with the federal law, necessarily, only that Congress really does have jurisdiction. As always, that jurisdiction stems from the “Commerce Clause”, which says that Congress has the power to regular interstate commerce. Whether or not this really counts as interstate commerce, well…who knows.