Project Syndicate - 0 views
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To be sure, the desire to live in a modern society and to be free of tyranny is universal, or nearly so. This is demonstrated by the efforts of millions of people each year to move from the developing to the developed world, where they hope to find the political stability, job opportunities, health care, and education that they lack at home. But this is different from saying that there is a universal desire to live in a liberal society – that is, a political order characterized by a sphere of individual rights and the rule of law. The desire to live in a liberal democracy is, indeed, something acquired over time, often as a byproduct of successful modernization.
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The EU’s attempt to transcend sovereignty and traditional power politics by establishing a transnational rule of law is much more in line with a “post-historical” world than the Americans’ continuing belief in God, national sovereignty, and their military.
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Outside powers like the US can often help in this process by the example they set as politically and economically successful societies. They can also provide funding, advice, technical assistance, and yes, occasionally military force to help the process along.
Big Brother Britain: Government and councils to spy on ALL our phones | the Daily Mail - 0 views
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But the same powers will also be handed to the tax authorities, 475 local councils, and a host of other organisations, including the Food Standards Agency, the Department of Health, the Immigration Service, the Gaming Board and the Charity Commission. The initiative, formulated in the wake of the Madrid and London terrorist attacks of 2004 and 2005, was put forward as a vital tool in the fight against terrorism. However, civil liberties campaigners say the new powers amount to a 'free for all' for the State snooping on its citizens.
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The new measures were implemented after the Home Secretary signed a 'statutory instrument' on July 26. The process allows the Government to alter laws without a full act of Parliament.
The time of the nation: negotiating global modernity | openDemocracy - 0 views
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This depoliticised nature of the contemporary, seen as the conceptual and experiential embodiment of globalised capitalism, consequently poses problems far more significant than the mere survival of the nation-state.
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Undoubtedly, since the demise of the postmodern epoch in the popular and academic imagination, the acceleration of technological forces in commerce and communication - that have paved the way for increased capital accumulation, exchange and crisis - have only heightened what Foucault and Jameson gesture towards as a lived sensation of pure simultaneity.
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In opposition to the crisis of the political generated by the false amalgamation of coeval living experiences, we might propose the concept of modernity; a concept that the nation-state might be perfectly situated to help elucidate. On this model, I would argue, modernity can be seen as linked to a increased self-consciousness of a secular conception of one's individual finitude (in the form of mortality but also one's personal and societal limits), and the collective negotiation of this issue via a democratic politics.
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Are you're Asking Yourself, "Where Can I Find a Notary?" - 2 views
If you are asking yourself "where can I find a notary," we obviously believe the best place is right here on FindNotary. We make finding a notary near you extremely simple. Just search by notary or...
Secret mailing list rocks Wikipedia | The Register - 0 views
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If you take Wikipedia as seriously as it takes itself, this is a huge problem. The site is ostensibly devoted to democratic consensus and the free exchange of ideas. But whether or not you believe in the holy law of Web 2.0, Wikipedia is tearing at the seams. Many of its core contributors are extremely unhappy about Durova's ill-advised ban and the exposure of the secret mailing list, and some feel that the site's well-being is seriously threatened. In a post to Wikipedia, Jimbo Wales says that this whole incident was blown out of proportion. "I advise the world to relax a notch or two. A bad block was made for 75 minutes," he says. "It was reversed and an apology given. There are things to be studied here about what went wrong and what could be done in the future, but wow, could we please do so with a lot less drama? A 75 minute block, even if made badly, is hardly worth all this drama. Let's please love each other, love the project, and remember what we are here for." But he's not admitting how deep this controversy goes. Wales and the Wikimedia Foudation came down hard on the editor who leaked Durova's email. After it was posted to the public forum, the email was promptly "oversighted" - i.e. permanently removed. Then this rogue editor posted it to his personal talk page, and a Wikimedia Foundation member not only oversighted the email again, but temporarily banned the editor. Then Jimbo swooped in with a personal rebuke. "You have caused too much harm to justify us putting up with this kind of behavior much longer," he told the editor. The problem, for many regular contributors, is that Wales and the Foundation seem to be siding with Durova's bizarre behavior. "I believe that Jimbo's credibility has been greatly damaged because of his open support for these people," says Charles Ainsworth. And if Jimbo can't maintain his credibility, the site's most experienced editors may not stick around. Since the banhammer came down, Bang Bang hasn't edited a lick.
SiliconValley.com - Why communications companies should escape surveillance lawsuits - 0 views
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Why communications companies should escape surveillance lawsuitsBy John D. Rockefeller IVArticle Launched: 11/01/2007 01:36:23 AM PDT var requestedWidth = 0; if(requestedWidth > 0){ document.getElementById('articleViewerGroup').style.width = requestedWidth + "px"; document.getElementById('articleViewerGroup').style.margin = "0px 0px 10px 10px"; } In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, the Bush administration had a choice: aggressively pursue potential terrorists using existing laws or devise new, secret intelligence programs in uncharted legal waters.
Rule of Law Index - 0 views
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Developing a more quantitatively-oriented assessment tool was deemed important because dictators often use the language of democracy to legitimize their actions. In its World Report 2008, Human Rights Watch (HRW) criticized established democracies for not doing enough to expose dubious democratic claims by authoritarian regimes.
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FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - Why banking is an accident waiting to happen - 0 views
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What seems increasingly clear is that the combination of generous government guarantees with rampant profit-making in inadequately capitalised institutions is an accident waiting to happen – again and again and again. Either the banking industry should be treated as a utility, with regulated returns, or it should be viewed as a profit-seeking industry that operates in accordance with the laws of the market, including, if necessary, mass bankruptcies.
AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: Thou Shalt Find It Impossible to Live Like the Bible Te... - 0 views
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Thou Shalt Find It Impossible to Live Like the Bible Tells You to By Anneli Rufus, AlterNet. Posted November 17, 2007. Author A.J. Jacobs spent a year trying to follow the 600+ laws he found proscribed in the Bible, and concluded he's doomed to live in sin. Tools EMAIL PRINT 84 COMMENTS The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs (Simon & Schuster, 2007) Share and save this post: Also in Rights and Liberties Indicted! Barry Bonds Is a Perfect Distraction from Real Events Dave Zirin Striking Nurses in W. Va are Met With Intimidation, Harassment and Car Fires! Richard Negri Hillary Auditions to Be a Feminist John Wayne Susan Faludi Democracy Belongs in the Workplace, Not Just in the Voting Booth Omar Freilla Gay? U.S. House Says That's Okay Deb Price More stories by Anneli Rufus Rights and Liberties RSS Feed Main AlterNet RSS Feed Get AlterNet in your mailbox! Advertisement border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(216, 216, 216); border-width: 0pt 1px 1px; p
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#1Thou Shalt Find It Impo >
Reviving the Invisible Hand: The Case for Classical Liberalism in the Twenty-first Cent... - 0 views
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One of Lal’s most significant contributions to economic science is his recognition of cosmology as a factor endowment. This recognition enriches institutional theory by explicitly introducing religion and superstition into institutional settings and further illuminates the problems of path dependency. There have been great civilizations in the past, but none produced the Promethean growth that came with capitalism. The older agrarian civilizations grew extensively to the limits of their natural resources, but they lacked the innovation and creativity for the kind of intensive growth that capitalism generated. The reason for this lack is not that our ancestors had no instinct for enterprise, but that they were constrained by social norms and communal bonds and, as Lal asserts, by prevailing cosmological beliefs that suppressed individualism.
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The second papal revolution occurred when Pope Gregory VII asserted the power of the church over that of the king or the emperor in the eleventh century. Lal argues, following Harold J. Berman (Law and Revolution [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983]), that this revolution set in place all the legal concepts and institutions needed for commerce.
Lessig.Info: Disclosure Statement - 0 views
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Disclosure Statement v1.0
Egypt's family courts: route to empowerment? | openDemocracy - 0 views
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the raising of the minimum age of marriage, restrictions on polygamy, and the introduction of fair divorce laws.
Multiculturalism's civic future: a response | openDemocracy - 0 views
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Nick Pearce objects to my joining those who deny the possibility of state neutrality in relation to culture and identity. He says that I thereby regrettably place myself outside the liberal egalitarian tradition, but then adds that "in reality few believe that the state can or should embody one version of the good life". So, it is unclear to me what the objection about neutrality is.
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Pearce want liberal "state neutrality to identity" - in other words, no preferences for this or that group based just on who they happen to be, where they come from historically or geographically or ethnically etc. Modood goes on to point out that Pearce says that "no one really believes that the state can embody one version of the good life", and Modood thinks this lets him off the first objection. I don't get the argument: a state could be set up to make some types of lives easier than others (eg secular consumerist versus religious) and yet not "embody one version"... of the good life. If there are 2 types of lives possible under a state, one slightly harder to pursue, does that mena the state "embodies the easier version?" And is the answer to this a function of the degree of cost?
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Some critics of multiculturalism worry about "where it will all end", and so deny that multiculturalism is compatible with individual rights, with equality before the law, with civic belonging.
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this seems to me to be the sort of argument: imagine a case where multiculturalism allows something _incompatible_ with individual rights - as in the clitoridectomy example. Then individual rights should trump "culural rights". Now imagine the alternative case where multiculturalism allows something that can co-exist with individual rights. Why is there anything now for the state to do? In other words, where does it ever bite? This must go back to the original question about the _neutrality_ of the state. Only if neutrality is impossible, then there is room for multiculturalism as an organising principle.
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