Congressman and former Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich told Big Think that he doesn’t expect Iraqis to have anything even resembling a positive opinion of the United States. He estimates that at least 1 million innocent Iraqi civilians have been killed in the conflict and says that if it was wrong for Saddam Hussein to kill his own people, then why it is OK for us to kill them?
Kucinich goes on to discuss the reasons for invading Iraq in the first place.
In The Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington writes about the media’s amnesia about the reasons for the invasion and subsequent surge. Huffington reminds us that President Bush’s stated goal was to create the breathing room needed for the establishment of an Iraqi government. But now Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain is claiming that the surge has succeeded because of a reduction in violence, even though the goals of a self-sufficient Iraqi military and the reliable production of electricity have not been met.
Jack Kevorkian, or Dr. Death, announced plans to run as an independent in the next Michigan Congressional race, according to the New York Times’ Lede blog, which asked whether Dr. Death would be able to put Washington out of its misery!
This time last year, Dr. Kevorkian had just been released after an eight-year prison sentence for facilitating the suicide of a man with Lou-Gehrig’s disease. At the time of his release, public opinion polls showed that more than two thirds of Americans believe in a person’s right to die, but many disagree about whether a doctor should legally be able to provide the means by which a patient commits suicide.
Doctors also feel this tension between upholding their oath to protect life, and their obligation to the wishes of their patients. When Bigthink asked Dr. Ira Byock of the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center about the right to die, he admitted to having interrupted numerous attempted suicides. However, he conceded that in the case of terminally ill patients, assisted suicide may uphold his role as a care-giver more than prolonging a patient’s suffering.
Even though the press room at the White House suspects it might just be a transcription error from one of those journalists, the Iraqi government has indicated in no uncertain terms that is wants a firm withdrawal date for American troops, and that no security deal will be reached without one.
Well, maybe some uncertain terms.
That security deal with the US is first dependent on Iraq having security responsibility in all 18 of its provinces (currently it controls nine), and even after the withdrawal the security situation will be subject to biannual scrutiny for another 3-5 years, which means that this “timetable” is less of a quick break-up and more of a long, painful divorce, replete with counseling, endless fees, community property, and jealous interloper anxiety.
Of course if there is one lesson from the Iraq war that one would hope to take hold, it is that wartime flexibility is a necessity, adjustments to changing conditions need to occur as those conditions change. Former Bush speechwriter David Frum, in some small way contributed to the Iraq catastrophe, and now having learned his lesson, recognizes flexibility’s importance, and knows there is no easy way out.
It’s not easy to get people to go green, and as treehugger points out, there are only five million ways to steep your lifestyle in the righteous fluids of environmental consciousness. As opposed to combating wasteful, earth eroding consumption practices bit by bit, they recommend gradually altering your dirty habits and shifting your values so that from a starting point of here, you, with a minimum of effort end up, say, here.
Adweek reports that we’ll finally be getting what we really need: a PBS cartoon featuring the NPR personalities from Car Talk exploring socially and environmentally conscious themes…with jokes! If that doesn’t rev your engine for societal transformation, maybe the show’s DMV public safety campaign tie-in will.
It’s easy to dismiss the Car Talk cartoon as a jalopy bound for failure—just like our “post-petroleum” future. But consider this unsurprising migration of green consumerism from physical products to entertainment products. Perhaps it will penetrate the core.
Treehugger’s founder Graham Hill was interviewed on Big Think and explained how to green your life without help from family safe PBS cartoons. Please click here to watch.
When Big Think asked world famous Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson about what political decision-makers should now about the environment, the conservationist hero makes an important distinction between what he calls the “living environment,” that is, the sum total of life on earth, and the “physical environment,” or the air, water, and earth systems that sustain life. Dr. Wilson warns that if we focus only on the physical environment–such as cleaning up water supplies and restructuring the use of non-renewable resources–without focusing on the health of the living environment, then we will lose both.
This is shocking news! Conventional wisdom asserts that if you keep the fish bowl clean enough, the fish inside will be just fine. And hence, most conservation efforts are based on the idea that all we need to do is preserve land.
E.O. Wilson, whose foresight has thus far been nearly 20/20, has served as a mentor to hundreds of aspiring conservationists. But who mentored him? Watch and see.
Big Think asked superstar actor and all-around environmentalist Harrison Ford whether his love of nature informs his acting. The answer: the basis of acting is empathy. In fact, says Ford, tuning into the “quiet and solace” as well as the “complication” of nature has given him an “ethical reality” that functions in place of any organized religion.
Timothy Egan reminds us of the famous Thomas Jefferson line in his Outposts blog today: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” But Egan is quick to reports both sides of the story: “Jefferson also said the only reliable truths in newspapers were the advertisements, and that he was happiest when not reading the papers.”
It’s no secret that newspapers are in deep trouble. Almost 1,000 jobs were eliminated in the American newspaper industry this week. Yet, newspaper Web sites attracted more than 66 million unique visitors in the first quarter of 2008 — a record, and a 12 percent increase over a year ago, according to a Nielsen Online analysis. And forty percent of all Internet users visit a newspaper site, reports Egan.
The problem is, nobody has figured out how to monetize news on the Web. Someone who is coming close is blog queen Arianna Huffington. Here she explains how to fix the newspaper business model.
Last summer, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy became a New York Times bestseller, accumulated mixed reviews, and a deep and intense loathing from Alan Derschowitz. The book, as you probably know, argues that the Israel lobby exerts a discouragingly strong hold over U.S. politics and policymaking, and argues that it was the Israel lobby that got us into war in Iraq.
The book concludes that obeying the U.S. Israel lobby is neither in the best interest of the U.S. nor in the best interest of Israel. Recently, the Dutch TV station VPRO International has made a documentary about it.
Big Think interviewed half of the book’s writing team, Professor of International Relations at Harvard University Stephen Walt, and one of the major detractors of their argument, Former Middle East Envoy Dennis Ross.
Ross criticizes Mearsheimer and Walt’s arguments as ideologically rather than factually driven. He argues that U.S. went to war in Iraq because of the president, not because of any lobby. He argues that lobbies hold no sway over the executive branch and that significant other reasons led the U.S. to initiate war:
Walt clarifies that the U.S. provides more financial and military aid to Israel than to any other country. He thinks this is problematic since Israel is not a poor state and it’s not in the best American interest. Although Israel faces more serious security problems than European countries because of its religious status in a primarily Muslim region, its existence is under no real threat because of its significant nuclear holdings. He likes that there is a Jewish state, but he thinks that the Israel lobby has exaggerated the dangers that said state faces:
Here are what other foreign policy experts say about the interests of Special Interests.
Yale Forestry Professor Gus Speth argues that special interest groups hold too much power in Washington. He wants to fight against them as much as possible:
Senator Ted Kennedy argues that interest groups should be accountable to the individual people it represents and not those who provide the funding:
AARP CEO Bill Novelli thinks that lobbies hold the real power in the U.S. Congress. Lobbies think in terms of groups, not individuals:
On Israel, Professor of Law at Harvard University Alan Dershowitz thinks that we should criticize Israel, but that criticism should be fair and not fall prey to a bigoted double standard:
Legendary German filmmaker Fritz Lang made many classic films, both in Germany and Hollywood. His reputation was so golden that even though his Dr. Mabuse films criticized fascism while the Nazi party was coming to power, he was invited to be Hitler’s personal filmmaker. Lang responded to the offer by leaving the country.
The most iconic of his films is Metropolis, which inspired science fiction films for decades, with flying cars and art deco robot that influenced the design of C3PO.
But watching the film itself has been a confusing experience–about 25 percent of the film has been lost since it’s 1927 release. In restored versions, title cards have attempted to fill in the blanks, but following the plot is still a challenge.
The science fiction blog io9 reports on the delightfully shocking discovery of the missing footage. The German film preservation group, Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau Foundation reports that the missing scenes have turned up in Buenos Aires, even though they had been thought lost forever.
Film lovers everywhere are eagerly anticipating the day when they can get the full Metropolis experience.
Dan Glickman, the President of the Motion Picture Association of America spoke with Big Think about the classic films that inspired his love of movies. He went on to discuss the Hollywood Legends of today, including Stephen Spielberg, who knows a thing or two about science fiction himself.
The CarpetBaggerReport, a political blog, recently highlighted the possibility that Obama may blunt his political edge as he tries to gain wider appeal. But the post was also intended to reassure Obamaniacs that their hero is hardly selling out. The subtext: Obama is politician, and like any politician, he plays to win.
Or does he?
Obama’s recent emphasis on his faith, and his friendly advances toward Christian groups do not represent political pandering as much as they reflect his actual beliefs.
Big Think spoke with Kay Warren, the wife of influential evangelical preacher Rick Warren, about the place and time for an evangelist to approach a potential convert with “the word of God.” Her position echoes the devout of any faith, “I think I have the answer, and I would like to share it with you.”
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