By: DR FAROOQ HASSAN

Dr. Hassan has a new essay in The Nation:

Every morning at my Harvard’s library desk I go through press reports on Pakistan. I regret to say that no country in the World has as bad things written about it as Pakistan does. While some of these critiques, ridicules or even sarcasm could be arguably attributed to antagonism that may conceivably exist against an Islamic country which has the nuclear capacity, I am afraid still a lot of what is said about Pakistan is usually true.

I cannot find any parallel in the contemporary history where a country has so little to speak up about itself as Pakistan. Dignity or honour has ceased to have any meaning in Pakistan’s public life. Theoretically none of these notions arguably even exist since in Pakistan almost everything that is publicly noticeable exhibits an alarming lack of even common decency or public morality.

Be it the utterly fake and discernible commitment to rule of law and constitutional supremacy or any other matter, the government is least bothered to take any noticeable action which could be morally correct. I am personally sick of hearing this comment that is often given by the President or the Prime Minister that “this or that matter will be decided by the parliament” when the said institution is seemingly as powerless, moribund and inactive as it was during the heyday of military adventures in this country.

Please read the essay in full.

The writer is a barrister at law (UK), attorney at law (US), senior advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, and professor at Harvard University.

Author: Michael D. McDonald, Dr.P.H.

Will the remnants of 20th Century national security mechanisms derail our own recovery and jeopardize the health, well-being and prosperity of Americans by consuming our societal attention and resources around the potential or actual next large terrorist attack, while other greater threats to our society and to the world continue to go unaddressed? Some argue, perhaps justifiably, that if our National Security apparatus operates again as it did in the years following the Al Qaeda’s attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 9/11/2001, it may irreversibly alter the fabric or our civil society, our superpower status internationally, and undermine our position of economic and military leadership in the world during the 21st Century.

Will our nation, by continuing to operate under an architecture for its national security infrastructures architected in the 20th Century forever be protecting Americans with strategies, tools and methodologies appropriate designed to fight its last war. Will our society blindly cripple its broader socio-ecological fabric while all of its attention and resources are spent on the obvious threats from adversaries, near-term short-cycle economic downturn, and periodic natural disasters? If so, is it not probable that we will miss the opportunity to become an important part of global, collaborative networks in addressing the opportunities and dangers of economic long-wave phenomenon, climate change, other aspects of global change and novel 21st Century challenges in the window of opportunity we have to successfully address these concerns? Is there a high likelihood that our nation might miss its critical window of opportunity to address our emerging mission critical sustainable security gaps? If so, how can American society now engage a significant transformation toward an infrastructure that uses our most advanced scientific and technological resources to focus and sustain our national security initiatives on our society’s highest priority emerging challenges and opportunities.

We must now face the discomforting question of whether the U.S. government and American society in the years and decades ahead will be able to transform itself successfully if the major challenges to our society are less likely to come from terrorism alone or threats to our sovereignty, but from collapses in local, regional, and global socio-ecological carrying capacities. For example, It is argued here that a U.S. National Sustainable Security Infrastructure discourse must now be engaged at the highest levels of the U.S. government, with input from the rest of American society, to ensure that this threat to American society does not impact us without a process that can anticipate, cushion and protect our society from such an impact that could kill not a few thousand people, as in the 9/11 attacks or Hurricane Katrina, but potentially hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans.
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By: DR FAROOQ HASSAN –

Dr. Hassan has published an essay of interest on the Mumbai massacre and Pakistan.

The mental shock on seeing the Mumbai massacre on the TV in my hotel room in Dubai was both abrupt and intense. I left soon thereafter as I was en route to performing the Hajj; but the thought of what future may hold for Pakistan gave rise to an uncomfortable sensation. I am now at Harvard where I have had more time to reflect and ponder over such matters.

The terrible state of things that currently surround Pakistan are patently visible to anyone who cares to realise the impact of this brutality. The dangers of indiscriminate blame are only too easy. One hopes that visionary wisdom and statesmanship will rule, but we know how hard that can be. The cold-blooded ferocity demonstrated in Mumbai is equally to be found elsewhere in the world - the West is far from immune; but the Muslims seem to be somehow exceptionally unfortunate to be the made focus of suspicion and murmur almost any time something erupts with a bang.

Please read the full essay here.

The writer is an attorney-at-law (US), barrister-at-law (UK), senior advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, and Professor at Harvard University.

Author: Aldon Hynes

In 2001, Robert Putnam published a seminal book on the decline of civic engagement. Entitled Bowling Alone, it traced the decline in participation in a wide range of community organizations, from voting and church attendance to bowling leagues. The election of Barack Obama with massive citizen involvement and the hope for more involvement during his administration may end up being viewed as a key turning point returning our country to greater civic engagement. However, it is useful to look at issues that may affect such involvement.

My own re-energized community involvement started with Gov. Dean’s 2004 Presidential bid. We held parties in our homes, met in local restaurants and traveled the state and beyond. Afterwards, Kim ran for State Representative and we started getting involved with the local political machinery. We were not always welcome.

Perhaps some of this is understandable. People who have been toiling away in various organizations when no one else seemed interested may be distrustful of new people with new ideas and new enthusiasm. They may be dubious that this new energy goes beyond one or two new people. After years of trying to bring in new people, they may be reluctant to reach out, yet again, for new activists.

Yet many that became involved in Gov. Dean’s 2004 Presidential bid have remained involved. They have played important roles in President-Elect Obama’s campaign. They have worked on other campaigns and run for office themselves.

Much of this can be attributed to the use of the social media tools on the Internet to help connect people. However, people have asked, can this ePolitics energy be transformed into good eGovernance? Will people that have been involved via the Internet in national campaigns become involved face to face on local issues? The Obama transition team is working hard to help facilitate this by naming the day before the inauguration, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 2009, a National Day of Service.

Local organizations would be wise to actively reach out to Obama inspired volunteers. Yet I fear that the same reluctance that local political organizations showed to newly energized political activists after the 2004 election may happen with civic organizations this time.

I have run into a little bit of this myself as I have attempted to become involved in the technology planning committee in our school district and to encourage others to participate.

The State of Connecticut requires each school district to prepare three-year technology plans and every school district in the state should be embarked on that effort right now. It would seem as if all of the energy and knowledge about technology that people gathered from the 2008 elections could be used to move this process forward. Yet it is hard to find out how to get involved.

In the current process, last summer each superintendent was contacted by the Commissioner of Education about the new technology plans. There have been meetings in each of the Regional Education Service Centers to talk about the plan, and they were well attended. However, as best as I can tell, this has done little to increase community involvement or sharing of ideas between committees.

A key objective that is often talked about in education is whether or not standardized test scores are increasing. While this is a laudable goal, it is also a bit short sighted. Yes, higher scores on standardized tests are a good thing, but they are but one result of other factors. Independent of standardized test scores, we need to look at students’ abilities to innovate creatively and cooperatively. Technology could help in this area, but there are other important factors. One of the most important factors is the level of parental involvement. Discussions with parents about how technology can be used to facilitate education might even be more important than the technology itself.

So, what is your involvement in your school district? If you live in Connecticut, are you aware of the technology planning process going on right now? Are you aware of the school budgets being considered right now? Are you going to be involved in the National Day of Service? If so, what projects are you going to work on?

I do hope that we are at a turning point in civic engagement. I do hope that those who have been so involved for so long will welcome the newly engaged. I do hope that they will see this as a great time to reach out, yet again, to the broader community and help rebuild our civic infrastructure.

By DR FAROOQ HASSAN
November 18, 2008

Dr. Hassan’s latest opinion piece has been published here.

Tyranny of good intentions

Any contemporary thinker of any significance cannot be in any doubt on the three salient aspects of the evolving political scenario in Pakistan, viz: (1) the manifest political operations through which Zardari has entered the portals of absolute power, (2) the apparently harmful response that Nawaz Sharif has exhibited thus far to the continuity of the Musharraf brand of governmental retention of power in presidency to the exclusion of Parliament, and (3) resultantly the bleak future of the country because of the lack of Opposition to the government which is the sine qua non of parliamentary systems.

People of Pakistan invariably make the right decisions for the ultimate betterment of the country. Time and again this phenomenon has been established. They demonstrated this public conception of the General Will, as Rousseau called it, in 1947, 1970 or, as most recently, in 2008. Did we not witness the same phenomenon again when the people by their vote demanded for a change on February 18? Did they not vote for Musharraf’s ouster and affirmatively condemn his consistent acts of usurpation since 1999? Was it not tantamount to a mandate for the restoration of the Musharraf-purged judiciary? We cannot simply forget that but for that “NO” that came from one CJ Iftikhar Chaudhry on March 9, 2007, all these present rulers and many in the Parliament would still be sitting in foreign lands as exiles or absolute nobodies within the country itself?

Please read all of Tyranny of good intentions here.

For the first time in his professional career, Constitutional Scholar Laurence Tribe - previously on various short-lists of potential Supreme Court nominees - proposed a Constitutional Amendment.

He felt it was necessary in order to assure that traditional 18th Century constitutional civil liberties would remain protected against modern technological threats.

On March 26, 1991, Professor Tribe (now a Obama administration advisor), in his keynote address at the First Conference on Computers, Freedom & Privacy (Burlingame, California), proposed the following to be the 27th Amendment:

“This Constitution’s protections for the freedoms of speech, press, petition, and assembly, and its protections against unreasonable searches and seizures and the deprivation of life, liberty or property without due process of law shall be construed as fully applicable without regard to the technological method or medium through which information content is generated, stored, altered, transmitted or controlled.”

He proposal and its rationale was later published in The Humanist, Sep/Oct 1991, pp.15-20,39

I just submitted a proposal urging that this finally be implemented - at least by statute and regulation if not by Constitutional Amendment - via the Obama administration’s http://change.gov/page/s/techagenda .

If enough people advocate the same and pass the word to all their friends, perhaps someone in the new administration might actually give it serious consideration.

–jim; Jim Warren; jwarren@well.com
founder & Chair, First Conference on Computers, Freedom & Privacy
Hansville WA ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Warren

Tags: civil liberties, due process, free press, freedom of speech, technological threats, unreasonable search, unreasonable seizuers

Author: Aldon Hynes

Everyone is talking about ways to bail out the auto industry now, so I thought I would share my socialist plan.

First, I would not lend the automakers $50 billion, or $25 billion, or what they are currently asking for. It just sounds a little bit too much like the No Income, No Asset (NINA) loans, that are the current whipping boy in the housing crisis.

That said, I do not believe we should abandon the workers or the industry and we should come up with some solutions.

One of the complaints of the U.S. automakers is there larger healthcare and pension costs. So, the Government should simply take those over now. Provide every autoworker and retired autoworker the same healthcare policy that congress gets. This would most likely result in better coverage for workers in a program that is probably better run and more cost effective, and it would relieve the automakers of a major burden, giving them a chance to be more competitive.
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Author: Aldon Hynes

Over the past couple of days, I’ve encountered incredible jubilation about the election of Barack Obama to be our next President. Yet in the background, I hear concerns expressed. Even in President-Elect Obama’s speech on Tuesday night, he spoke about the difficult task ahead. I’m on a mailing list of group psychologists that I often turn to, to try and make sense of the dynamics which are going on, and this list, too, has been overrun by jubilation. To them, and to all of you, I want to ask, why is this jubilation so great? Are we missing something by not heeding President-Elect Obama’s words about the difficult task ahead? What might we be missing?

It seems that there are probably many intermixed causes for this and that if we understand and name better, we may be better prepared to protect it. Here are some of the thoughts I shared with the list.
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Tell Them About the Dream

Please do it TODAY!

A terrific music video by Laura Vecchione (Veck-ee-oh-nee)

She writes:

Dear Friends,

This is a song and video that came together in a week, in three different cities, because of people’s belief in Sen. Obama and his message of renewal and the historic nature of this election. We got it done just in the nick of time!!!

The song was inspired by Gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson reminding Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to “Tell Them About the Dream.” The musicians you see are piano virtuoso, Jonathan Batiste and his amazing Quartet in NYC.

It was made miraculously fast by Ralph Modica of Phase1Digital in NYC and mixed in LA by Jim Scott.

Please help us spread it to as many people as possible before Nov.4th as inspiration for Election Day!! If it inspires you, please post it on your Facebook and Myspace pages and share with friends!!

Thanks for caring, and don’t forget to vote!!!!
Love,

Laura (and my amazing videographer, Ralph!)

Laura Vecchione (Veck-ee-oh-nee)
Selkie Music
www.lauravmusic.com
www.myspace.com/lauravecchione

PS To read more about details behind making this visit my Myspace blog

If you concur, please share this as far and wide as possible TODAY!

Thanks,

Jock