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Dripa B

An Answer to the Question: "What is Enlightenment?" | Immanuel Kant (1784) - 0 views

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    This remains one of the best texts of the permanent struggle for Enlightenment -- values that assert universal human freedom, dignity and equality. Values that include internationalism, participatory and representative democracy based. These values inform our struggleto end of political and social domination of persons and societies globally. - Zackie Achmat
Dripa B

Israel orders house demolition | Jerusalem Post (06.08.08) - 0 views

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      HRW: "Proposals to allow the Israel Defense Forces to resume the collective punishment of house demolitions would mark a substantial step backward in Israel's respect for human rights - a return to illegality. ...Punishing people for the crimes of others is no solution to terrorism. Israel should focus on bringing to justice those who actually plan or carry out attacks."
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      The demolition policy violates both Article 17 of the ICCPR and Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits all property destruction in occupied territories except as "absolutely necessary" for military reasons. They also alleged violations of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention because the demolitions are collective punishments affecting people who are not suspected terrorists.
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    Jerusalem Mayor: "The demolition will serve as clear message that the families of every terrorist who goes out to attack and murder Israelis will also be harmed." Barak and Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin have expressed support for demolishing homes of east Jerusalem Arab terrorists since they both said it was an effective tool for deterring attacks.
Dripa B

A Basic Income for All | Philippe Van Parijs (2000) - 0 views

  • productivity, wealth, and national incomes have advanced sufficiently far to support an adequate UBI. And if enacted, a basic income would serve as a powerful instrument of social justice: it would promote real freedom for all by providing the material resources that people need to pursue their aims. At the same time, it would help to solve the policy dilemmas of poverty and unemployment, and serve ideals associated with both the feminist and green movements.
  • in 1999, the Alaska Permanent Fund paid each person of whatever age who had been living in Alaska for at least one year an annual UBI of $1,680.
  • By universal basic income I mean an income paid by a government, at a uniform level and at regular intervals, to each adult member of society. The grant is paid, and its level is fixed, irrespective of whether the person is rich or poor, lives alone or with others, is willing to work or not. In most versions–certainly in mine–it is granted not only to citizens, but to all permanent residents.
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  • The idea of the UBI is at least 150 years old. Its two earliest known formulations were inspired by Charles Fourier, the prolific French utopian socialist. In 1848, while Karl Marx was finishing off the Communist Manifesto around the corner, the Brussels-based Fourierist author Joseph Charlier published Solution of the Social Problem, in which he argued for a "territorial dividend" owed to each citizen by virtue of our equal ownership of the nation’s territory. The following year, John Stuart Mill published a new edition of his Principles of Political Economy, which contains a sympathetic presentation of Fourierism ("the most skillfully combined, and with the greatest foresight of objections, of all the forms of Socialism") rephrased so as to yield an unambiguous UBI proposal: "In the distribution, a certain minimum is first assigned for the subsistence of every member of the community, whether capable or not of labour. The remainder of the produce is shared in certain proportions, to be determined beforehand, among the three elements, Labour, Capital, and Talent."
  • It was seriously discussed by left-wing academics such as G. D. H. Cole and James Meade in England between the World Wars and, via Abba Lerner, it seems to have inspired Milton Friedman’s proposal for a "negative income tax."6 But only since the late-1970s has the idea gained real political currency in a number of European countries, starting with the Netherlands and Denmark.
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    If you really care about freedom, give people an unconditional income at a level sufficient for subsistence. Productivity, wealth, and national incomes have advanced sufficiently far to support an adequate UBI. And if enacted, a basic income would serve as a powerful instrument of social justice: it would promote real freedom for all by providing the material resources that people need to pursue their aims. At the same time, it would help to solve the policy dilemmas of poverty and unemployment, and serve ideals associated with both the feminist and green movements.
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