Friday, May 27, 2005
Judges have been told by Attorney-General Michael Cullen to point out deficiencies in law in their judgments rather than try to change the law through judicial activism. In his first big speech since becoming Attorney-General in February, he reasserted his view of the supremacy of Parliament over the courts, saying that their independence did not give them American-style powers to strike down legislation or alter it if it was found wanting.
Meanwhile, Stephen Franks says people don't realise just how far Labour has taken us down the road to undermining constitutional freedoms. The current constitutional inquiry is actually a smoke-screen to hide what is happening.
World leaders are ignoring the threat of an influenza pandemic that could infect a billion people and reach New Zealand within hours of an outbreak, scientists warn. International experts have outlined a disastrous scenario if the threat from the virulent H5N1 strain of Asian bird flu is not taken seriously. Global health officials fear it may mutate into a lethal strain that could rival the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that killed between 20 million and 40 million people. Such a pandemic could affect 20 per cent of the world's population, putting 30 million in hospital and killing a quarter of them, experts fear. It would also lead to the collapse of international trade, causing economic and social chaos.
Britain's government has re-introduced a controversial bill to bring in identity cards, legislation that had to be put aside earlier this year when Prime Minister Tony Blair called the May 5 election. The government also argues ID cards would help track terrorism, illegal immigration and organised crime. But critics, including some Labour members of parliament, say cards pose a dangerous threat to civil liberties.
Europe is filled with angst and the Roman Catholic Church is in crisis, the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, said last night. In a lecture at Westminster Cathedral, the spiritual leader of more than four million Catholics in England and Wales said that the Church in Europe, in particular Britain, was in a time of crisis and of “dying and rising”. He described the modern European as a person of angst, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the many liberties enjoyed in contemporary Western culture. He said that Europe would fall into anguish if it forgot God and lost touch with its Judaeo-Christian tradition.
The words appear on every dollar bill and US coin. They are displayed at the entrance to the US Senate and above the Speaker's chair in the House. But when local officials in North Carolina placed "In God We Trust" on the front of the Davidson County Government Center, they soon found themselves in federal court facing a complaint that they were violating the separation of church and state. The case is one of an array of church-state battles across the country seeking to establish a bedrock answer to a difficult constitutional question: To what extent may the government bring God into the public square?
The debate over the ethics of destroying human embryos took on a childlike face on Capitol Hill this week at a news conference featuring "snowflake" babies (children conceived from frozen embryos discarded at fertility clinics). The children appeared to persuade lawmakers to oppose legislation that would expand research conducted on stem cells extracted from the destruction of human embryos. (The bill still passed the House.) Since 1998, there have been more than 80 children born to parents who adopted snowflakes, and 15 more are due. More than 400,000 embryos live in cold storage across the nation.
Tail-out: Crusaders 26 - Waratahs 20. (Whoops, sorry - that's for Monday's Daily Briefing.)
Meanwhile, Stephen Franks says people don't realise just how far Labour has taken us down the road to undermining constitutional freedoms. The current constitutional inquiry is actually a smoke-screen to hide what is happening.
World leaders are ignoring the threat of an influenza pandemic that could infect a billion people and reach New Zealand within hours of an outbreak, scientists warn. International experts have outlined a disastrous scenario if the threat from the virulent H5N1 strain of Asian bird flu is not taken seriously. Global health officials fear it may mutate into a lethal strain that could rival the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that killed between 20 million and 40 million people. Such a pandemic could affect 20 per cent of the world's population, putting 30 million in hospital and killing a quarter of them, experts fear. It would also lead to the collapse of international trade, causing economic and social chaos.
Britain's government has re-introduced a controversial bill to bring in identity cards, legislation that had to be put aside earlier this year when Prime Minister Tony Blair called the May 5 election. The government also argues ID cards would help track terrorism, illegal immigration and organised crime. But critics, including some Labour members of parliament, say cards pose a dangerous threat to civil liberties.
Europe is filled with angst and the Roman Catholic Church is in crisis, the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, said last night. In a lecture at Westminster Cathedral, the spiritual leader of more than four million Catholics in England and Wales said that the Church in Europe, in particular Britain, was in a time of crisis and of “dying and rising”. He described the modern European as a person of angst, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the many liberties enjoyed in contemporary Western culture. He said that Europe would fall into anguish if it forgot God and lost touch with its Judaeo-Christian tradition.
The words appear on every dollar bill and US coin. They are displayed at the entrance to the US Senate and above the Speaker's chair in the House. But when local officials in North Carolina placed "In God We Trust" on the front of the Davidson County Government Center, they soon found themselves in federal court facing a complaint that they were violating the separation of church and state. The case is one of an array of church-state battles across the country seeking to establish a bedrock answer to a difficult constitutional question: To what extent may the government bring God into the public square?
The debate over the ethics of destroying human embryos took on a childlike face on Capitol Hill this week at a news conference featuring "snowflake" babies (children conceived from frozen embryos discarded at fertility clinics). The children appeared to persuade lawmakers to oppose legislation that would expand research conducted on stem cells extracted from the destruction of human embryos. (The bill still passed the House.) Since 1998, there have been more than 80 children born to parents who adopted snowflakes, and 15 more are due. More than 400,000 embryos live in cold storage across the nation.
Tail-out: Crusaders 26 - Waratahs 20. (Whoops, sorry - that's for Monday's Daily Briefing.)
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Michael Cullen looks niggardly by comparison to his UK counterpart, Gordon Brown. A revolutionary scheme to provide hundreds of thousands of struggling first-time buyers with cheap mortgages funded by taxpayers' money is to be announced this week. Under ambitious plans to turn Britain into a nation of owner-occupiers, Chancellor Gordon Brown will outline a deal struck with lenders under which couples would have to raise as little as half of the cost of homes sold on the open market. The rest of the equity in the house would be shared by the government and the bank or building society - potentially slashing average monthly repayments on a £200,000 home by up to £372 a month.
Why are the French and the Dutch teetering on the brink of voting "not" to the proposed European Constitution over the next week. Andrew Rawnsley looks at the the issues.
As policymakers in the United States, Europe and Asia grapple with the long-term affordability of their pensions systems, a new World Bank report says that growing demographic and economic pressures are forcing both developing and developed countries to undertake urgent pension reform.
Here's a good example of why it's important to protect your computer against Internet invaders. According to a disturbing report published today by Websense Security Labs, scam artists are using known security flaws in Internet Explorer to seize control over any text files found on their victims' computers. Those files are then scrambled using an encryption scheme controlled by the attackers, rendering the files unreadable and useless to the victim unless he or she pays for a decoder program by paying $200 to the attackers. The attack leverages an IE security hole that Microsoft released a patch for last July (ironically, the flaw resides in an IE "help" feature).
Latin is not dead. Indeed, something like 75 percent of the multisyllabic words in the English lexicon come from Latin, or from Greek via Latin, or from Latin via French. If Latin died in our mouths, we'd just stop talking.
On several reformist Arabic-language websites, Tunisian thinker Al-'Afif Al-Akhdar has posted an in-depth analysis of the necessary reforms needed in the Arab and Muslim world concluding that secularism is vital for its future. Secularization and modernization, he writes, are global historic processes that cannot be avoided in the long run. He also explains secularism is the key to full citizenship for men, women, Muslims, and non-Muslims, as well as to proper relations among all elements of society. According to Al-Akhdar's analysis, Islamist thought is primitive and incapable of accepting human thought over divine decree. He adds, Islamists seeking to prevent the modernization of the Arab and Muslim world, and struggle against secularism, is a manifestation of modernization. While their struggle is doomed to fail, he explains, it may nevertheless be impossible to skip stages of history, and Islamic countries may have to experience Islamic rule before finally despairing of its false promises to eventually adopt a secular regime.
Is this the future of news? In the year 2014, the New York Times has gone offline. The Fourth Estate's fortunes have waned. What happened to the news? (Your Internet browser will need the ability to read Flash files to see this 8min presentation.)
Why are the French and the Dutch teetering on the brink of voting "not" to the proposed European Constitution over the next week. Andrew Rawnsley looks at the the issues.
As policymakers in the United States, Europe and Asia grapple with the long-term affordability of their pensions systems, a new World Bank report says that growing demographic and economic pressures are forcing both developing and developed countries to undertake urgent pension reform.
Here's a good example of why it's important to protect your computer against Internet invaders. According to a disturbing report published today by Websense Security Labs, scam artists are using known security flaws in Internet Explorer to seize control over any text files found on their victims' computers. Those files are then scrambled using an encryption scheme controlled by the attackers, rendering the files unreadable and useless to the victim unless he or she pays for a decoder program by paying $200 to the attackers. The attack leverages an IE security hole that Microsoft released a patch for last July (ironically, the flaw resides in an IE "help" feature).
Latin is not dead. Indeed, something like 75 percent of the multisyllabic words in the English lexicon come from Latin, or from Greek via Latin, or from Latin via French. If Latin died in our mouths, we'd just stop talking.
On several reformist Arabic-language websites, Tunisian thinker Al-'Afif Al-Akhdar has posted an in-depth analysis of the necessary reforms needed in the Arab and Muslim world concluding that secularism is vital for its future. Secularization and modernization, he writes, are global historic processes that cannot be avoided in the long run. He also explains secularism is the key to full citizenship for men, women, Muslims, and non-Muslims, as well as to proper relations among all elements of society. According to Al-Akhdar's analysis, Islamist thought is primitive and incapable of accepting human thought over divine decree. He adds, Islamists seeking to prevent the modernization of the Arab and Muslim world, and struggle against secularism, is a manifestation of modernization. While their struggle is doomed to fail, he explains, it may nevertheless be impossible to skip stages of history, and Islamic countries may have to experience Islamic rule before finally despairing of its false promises to eventually adopt a secular regime.
Is this the future of news? In the year 2014, the New York Times has gone offline. The Fourth Estate's fortunes have waned. What happened to the news? (Your Internet browser will need the ability to read Flash files to see this 8min presentation.)
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Bill Clinton is being seriously touted as a successor to Kofi Annan at the UN. [From one scandal-creator to another!?]
UK Home Secretary Charles Clarke says the Government will, if necessary, use the Parliament Act to force through the Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill. The legislation will expand the current offence of incitement to racial hatred to include instances where people incite hatred of others because of their beliefs. The Bill has previously been blocked by the House of Lords because of concerns over free speech.
The number of German couples opting for a childless life is worrying the country's politicians and employers. A study by the federal institute for demographic research showed that 26 percent of men and 15 percent of women aged between 20 and 39 do not want to start a family - a sharp rise since 1992. "There is an increasing belief that not having children is the ideal way of life," the authors of the study concluded. Germany has a birth rate of around 1.4. Forty percent of university educated women of child-bearing age are childless. 83 per cent of respondents cited lack of a partner or a stable relationship as the main reason for not having children. "Abandoning the idea of children is abandoning the idea of life," said Otto Schily, a radical lawyer turned German interior minister.
The most important bioethics case in the world today involves a 45-year-old Englishman, Leslie Burke. He isn't asking for very much. Burke has a progressive neurological disease that may one day deprive him of the ability to swallow. If that happens, Burke wants to receive food and water through a tube. Knowing that Britain's National Health Service (NHS) rations care, Burke sued to ensure that he will not be forced to endure death by dehydration against his wishes. Burke, who is fully competent, worries that his wishes will be ignored precisely because he wants food and water even if he becomes totally paralyzed. But, it turns out, whether he lives or dies by dehydration may not be up to him. According to National Health Service treatment guidelines, doctors, rather than patients or their families, have the final say about providing or withholding care.
An official report dealing with religious expression in French schools has become a must read for anyone interested in the Islamization of France. Written under the auspices of the top national education official, Jean-Pierre Obin, the report was not initially released by the Ministry of Education but it was leaked on the Internet. The report is the product of a study carried out between October 2003 and May 2004 by a team of 10 inspectors, including Obin. They found a marked increase in religious expression, especially Muslim expression, in schools; and denial on the part of officials at all levels that this phenomenon is occurring. Scores of informants told the Obin team that these neighborhoods were undergoing a "rapid and recent swing" toward Islamization, thanks to the growing influence of young religious activists. The biggest social change is a deterioration in the position of females. Teenage girls are forbidden to play sports and are constantly watched by an informal religious police made up of young men. Makeup, skirts, and form-fitting dresses are forbidden; to go to the blackboard in front of a class, some Muslim girls put on long coats. Often, they are forced to wear the headscarf, or hijab, and forbidden to frequent coed movie theaters, community centers, and gyms, or even to go out at all on weekends. In primary schools, the report cites instances of first grade boys refusing to participate in coed activities and Muslim children's refusing to sing, dance, or draw a face. Most Muslim kids refuse to participate in sports or swimming, the girls out of modesty, the boys because they do not want to swim in "girls' water" or "non-Muslim water." Hatred against Jews is also on the rise. In a particularly interesting observation, Obin notes that it is the schools that have reached accommodations with the extremists that are most plagued by violence against girls, Jews, and teachers.
Star Wars III is out and breaking box office records. The whole genre is more than just a series of movies for many - it is also their life. Some are wearing Jedi costume to work, marrying in it, and following the "Jedi way" as a religion. There are so many adherents, there are now moves to have it officially registered in the US.
In similar vein, a Sydney academic says the internet has become almost like a 21st-century church or temple. Disenchantment with organised religion has given rise to spiritual movements inspired by cinema and books and promulgated on the World Wide Web, says Adam Possamai, president of the Australian Association for the Study of Religions and a sociologist at the University of Western Sydney. Star Trek, the Matrix trilogy and Star Wars, even the Harry Potter films, the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are more than pieces of cinematic or television escapism, Dr Possamai says. Their stories of spiritual drama, littered with a religious subtext of good versus evil, "chosen ones", prophets of doom and a benevolent universal power, mean they are a source of inspiration for "seekers".
Many Christians were stunned by the recent announcement that eminent British philosopher Antony Flew, sometimes billed as "the world's most famous atheist," has come to affirm the existence of God after a lifetime of publicly arguing against such a belief (although it should be noted that Flew has only converted to Theism, not Christianity). But Timothy Larsen notes that such conversions are not that unusual. William Murray - son of America's most famous atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair - was once president of the organization American Atheists. He converted to Christianity in 1980, going on to become a conservative, ordained Christian minister and evangelist. And research on the history of religious skepticism in Victorian Britain shgows that intellectually rigorous, militant unbelievers convert to Christianity surprisingly often.
After years of living in constant fear of aids, many gay men have chosen to resume sexual practices that are almost guaranteed to make them sick. In New York City, the rate of syphilis has increased by more than 400 percent in the past five years. Gay men account for virtually the entire rise. Between 1998 and 2000, fifteen per cent of the syphilis cases in Chicago could be attributed to gay men. Since 2001, that number has grown to sixty per cent. Look at the statistics closely and you will almost certainly find the drug. In one recent study, twenty-five per cent of those men who reported methamphetamine use in the previous month were infected with H.I.V.
Representatives of the nation's top psychiatric group have just approved a statement urging legal recognition of gay marriage. If approved by the association's directors in July, the measure would make the American Psychiatric Association the first major medical group to take such a stance. The statement supports same-sex marriage "in the interest of maintaining and promoting mental health." It follows a similar measure by the American Psychological Association last year, little more than three decades after that group removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.
UK Home Secretary Charles Clarke says the Government will, if necessary, use the Parliament Act to force through the Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill. The legislation will expand the current offence of incitement to racial hatred to include instances where people incite hatred of others because of their beliefs. The Bill has previously been blocked by the House of Lords because of concerns over free speech.
The number of German couples opting for a childless life is worrying the country's politicians and employers. A study by the federal institute for demographic research showed that 26 percent of men and 15 percent of women aged between 20 and 39 do not want to start a family - a sharp rise since 1992. "There is an increasing belief that not having children is the ideal way of life," the authors of the study concluded. Germany has a birth rate of around 1.4. Forty percent of university educated women of child-bearing age are childless. 83 per cent of respondents cited lack of a partner or a stable relationship as the main reason for not having children. "Abandoning the idea of children is abandoning the idea of life," said Otto Schily, a radical lawyer turned German interior minister.
The most important bioethics case in the world today involves a 45-year-old Englishman, Leslie Burke. He isn't asking for very much. Burke has a progressive neurological disease that may one day deprive him of the ability to swallow. If that happens, Burke wants to receive food and water through a tube. Knowing that Britain's National Health Service (NHS) rations care, Burke sued to ensure that he will not be forced to endure death by dehydration against his wishes. Burke, who is fully competent, worries that his wishes will be ignored precisely because he wants food and water even if he becomes totally paralyzed. But, it turns out, whether he lives or dies by dehydration may not be up to him. According to National Health Service treatment guidelines, doctors, rather than patients or their families, have the final say about providing or withholding care.
An official report dealing with religious expression in French schools has become a must read for anyone interested in the Islamization of France. Written under the auspices of the top national education official, Jean-Pierre Obin, the report was not initially released by the Ministry of Education but it was leaked on the Internet. The report is the product of a study carried out between October 2003 and May 2004 by a team of 10 inspectors, including Obin. They found a marked increase in religious expression, especially Muslim expression, in schools; and denial on the part of officials at all levels that this phenomenon is occurring. Scores of informants told the Obin team that these neighborhoods were undergoing a "rapid and recent swing" toward Islamization, thanks to the growing influence of young religious activists. The biggest social change is a deterioration in the position of females. Teenage girls are forbidden to play sports and are constantly watched by an informal religious police made up of young men. Makeup, skirts, and form-fitting dresses are forbidden; to go to the blackboard in front of a class, some Muslim girls put on long coats. Often, they are forced to wear the headscarf, or hijab, and forbidden to frequent coed movie theaters, community centers, and gyms, or even to go out at all on weekends. In primary schools, the report cites instances of first grade boys refusing to participate in coed activities and Muslim children's refusing to sing, dance, or draw a face. Most Muslim kids refuse to participate in sports or swimming, the girls out of modesty, the boys because they do not want to swim in "girls' water" or "non-Muslim water." Hatred against Jews is also on the rise. In a particularly interesting observation, Obin notes that it is the schools that have reached accommodations with the extremists that are most plagued by violence against girls, Jews, and teachers.
Star Wars III is out and breaking box office records. The whole genre is more than just a series of movies for many - it is also their life. Some are wearing Jedi costume to work, marrying in it, and following the "Jedi way" as a religion. There are so many adherents, there are now moves to have it officially registered in the US.
In similar vein, a Sydney academic says the internet has become almost like a 21st-century church or temple. Disenchantment with organised religion has given rise to spiritual movements inspired by cinema and books and promulgated on the World Wide Web, says Adam Possamai, president of the Australian Association for the Study of Religions and a sociologist at the University of Western Sydney. Star Trek, the Matrix trilogy and Star Wars, even the Harry Potter films, the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are more than pieces of cinematic or television escapism, Dr Possamai says. Their stories of spiritual drama, littered with a religious subtext of good versus evil, "chosen ones", prophets of doom and a benevolent universal power, mean they are a source of inspiration for "seekers".
Many Christians were stunned by the recent announcement that eminent British philosopher Antony Flew, sometimes billed as "the world's most famous atheist," has come to affirm the existence of God after a lifetime of publicly arguing against such a belief (although it should be noted that Flew has only converted to Theism, not Christianity). But Timothy Larsen notes that such conversions are not that unusual. William Murray - son of America's most famous atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair - was once president of the organization American Atheists. He converted to Christianity in 1980, going on to become a conservative, ordained Christian minister and evangelist. And research on the history of religious skepticism in Victorian Britain shgows that intellectually rigorous, militant unbelievers convert to Christianity surprisingly often.
After years of living in constant fear of aids, many gay men have chosen to resume sexual practices that are almost guaranteed to make them sick. In New York City, the rate of syphilis has increased by more than 400 percent in the past five years. Gay men account for virtually the entire rise. Between 1998 and 2000, fifteen per cent of the syphilis cases in Chicago could be attributed to gay men. Since 2001, that number has grown to sixty per cent. Look at the statistics closely and you will almost certainly find the drug. In one recent study, twenty-five per cent of those men who reported methamphetamine use in the previous month were infected with H.I.V.
Representatives of the nation's top psychiatric group have just approved a statement urging legal recognition of gay marriage. If approved by the association's directors in July, the measure would make the American Psychiatric Association the first major medical group to take such a stance. The statement supports same-sex marriage "in the interest of maintaining and promoting mental health." It follows a similar measure by the American Psychological Association last year, little more than three decades after that group removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.
