golge011/politics

An informative documantary on Dalits, the untouchable caste in India. I hope most Indians do not support this ugly tradition.

From the page: "According to the most reliable ­estimates, we have doled out more than $500 billion for the war, as well as $44 billion for the Iraqi reconstruction effort. And what did America's contractors give us for that money? They built big steaming shit piles, set brand-new trucks on fire, drove back and forth across the desert for no reason at all and dumped bags of nails in ditches. For the most part, nobody at home cared, because war on some level is always a waste. But what happened in Iraq went beyond inefficiency, beyond fraud even. This was about the business of government being corrupted by the profit motive to such an extraordinary degree that now we all have to wonder how we will ever be able to depend on the state to do its job in the future. If catastrophic failure is worth billions, where's the incentive to deliver success? There's no profit in patriotism, no cost-plus angle on common decency. Sixty years after America liberated Europe, those are just words, and words don't pay the bills."

An interesting book.

From the page: "It seems as if wherever a renewable energy forum develops, elected officials are sure to be present, using the open dais as an opportunity to pledge their support to green energy, to clean communities and a clean environment. Cynics may sense that what is really occurring are just symbolic politics -- elected officials appealing to constituents through public statements; establishing renewable energy incentive programs and offering various sums to "demonstration projects.""

From the page: "The United States is now prosecuting suspected terrorists on the basis of their intentions, not just their actions. But in the case of Islamic extremists, how can American jurors fairly weigh words and beliefs when Muslims themselves can�t agree on what they mean?

by Amy Waldman"

An interesting article, although I'm not sure whether it is outdated or not.

From the page: "The poor Turks are damned either way. If they ban the symbols of Muslim devotion, they're fascists; if they allow them, they're fundamentalists.

Once again, we see Europe's politicians determined, in Gladstone's unhappy phrase, 'to turn the Turk, bag and baggage, out of Europe.'�

They will seize on any development - even an abstruse row about the presidential nominee's wife's headscarf - as an excuse to defer Turkey's application for EU membership.

One day we are told that Ankara needs to do more for its Kurds, the next that it is being obstreperous over Cyprus, the next that it should grovel about the 1915 Armenian massacres.

Not all these objections are baseless, but it is striking to see how differently Turkey is being treated from other members. No one asks the Belgians to face up to what they did in the Congo, or the French to apologise for Algeria.

Ankara is especially aggrieved about Cyprus, and with reason: Turkish Cypriots voted to accept the EU's reunification deal, but have since been isolated; Greek Cypriots voted to reject it, but have been embraced.

Some Turkosceptic arguments are plain silly. Last month, MEPs hectored Ankara about getting more women into politics - this despite the fact that Turkey elected its first female head of government 14 years ago, while 18 out of the 27 EU members have never been led by a woman.

The trouble is that Brussels won't come clean about its real objection which is, quite simply, that there are too many Turks.

Under the reheated EU constitution, voting weights are to be determined by population. Turkey is already larger than every state except Germany; and, while Europe is shrinking, Turkey is teeming."

I don't think EU has an ideal or even a leadership. It's just a band of rafts trying to move 27 different directions. It's not a suprise that EU is least liked in polls after USA in Turkiye.

Fropm the page:""Tania Derveaux, leading candidate for senate of the NEE party in Belgium goes completely naked for the party's campaign and for Belgium's most popular men's magazine. Their official campaign involves billboards featuring her in all her naked glory with a very seductive look and the text "I promise you 400.000 jobs" above her."

I've tagged this politics. Thats because I want more of these campaigns. :)