1. It’s Too Damn Hot - As a rule I generally try to avoid talking about the weather, but I can’t help myself today. Holy shit it’s hot.
2. Cambodian Corruption - The Cambodian Parliament ia trying to pass a law that would require all NGOs to register with the government and to follow complex reporting procedures. The law would also give the government the power to shut down any group it considers to be opposed to it.
So the NGOs will essentially be forced to work for the government. Worst idea ever. (Donors Asked to Withhold Aid To Cambodia)
A proposed law to control nongovernmental groups in Cambodiathreatens to silence some of the last independent voices in an increasingly repressed nation, a group of leading international human rights agencies said Thursday.
Calling the proposal “the most significant threat to the country’s civil society in many years,” the agencies urged foreign nations and aid groups to oppose the law, which they said would undermine much of the nation-building work the donors have supported at a cost of billions of dollars.
Human rights advocates said the law would cap a long process during which Prime Minister Hun Sen has imposed controls over his political opponents, the security forces and the judiciary, leaving the independent groups and civil society the country’s only independent voices.
“Should this law pass as it is currently formulated, the survival of each and every N.G.O. in Cambodia will be at the whim of the government,” said Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, referring to nongovernmental agencies that monitor and act on areas like human rights, legal affairs, the environment, land issues, public health and the role and rights of women.
3. Another One Bites The Dust – I’ve now had three iPod’s break in the last six months– one real one and two crappy Malaysian knockoffs. This climate just kills electronics. It will be a small miracle if my computer makes it through the next three months of hot season.
4. Three Cups of BS? – So apparently 60 Minutes is running a piece today about alleged inaccuracies in Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea. Why a guy who has done so much good work and accomplished as much as he has would need to make stuff up is beyond me. It will be a real shame if this story adversely affects the work of his organization. (Three Cups of Tea Inaccurate)
5. A Peace Corps Song – The Peace Corps recently held a YouTube video contest and this was one of the winners. It’s a little cheesy, but I like it…
Read MAUREEN DOWD today (“Atlas Without Angelina”) if you want an AYN RAND fix. Dowd is so clever.
“Obama is antithetical to Rand’s ideal man, Howard Roark, the architect of skyscrapers who violently refuses to exists for others. Paul Ryan, trying to push the cost of Medicare and Medicaid on to the old, the sick and the disabled while rewarding insurance companies with bigger profits would be more up her alley.
Indeed, Congressman Ryan has said the reason he got involved in public service was “by and large” because of Rand, and he has encouraged his staffers to read ‘Atlas Shrugged.’”
And read too (Yay for newspapers and the Sunday NY Times) the GARRY WILLS review for “A Thousand Times More Fair: What Shakespeare’s Plays teach us about Justice” by Kenji Yoshino. Yoshino is a respected legal scholar (the Chief Justice Earl Warren professor of constitutional law at NYU) who regularly teaches a course on the law and literature. In this class he likes to match a play of Shakespeare with a modern event or issue. He says his course on constitutional law is oversubscribed by two to one but the class on literature and the law has more applicants by six to one. Here are the events he lists. You’ll have to read the book (or the review) to figure out the plays.
1. The war on terror
2. Bill Clinton discussing Monica Lewinsky
3. Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation
4. The O.J. Simpson trial
5. George W. Bush’s recovery from alcoholism
6. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “arc of the moral universe” speech
7. A dissent in the Dred Scott decision
8. The inevitability of death
9. George Washington turning down a third term
A good distraction from thinking about the weather (70 and sunny today in milehighland/and 50 plus in Ann Arbor) and the Greg Mortenson scandal. Why, indeed?
Thanks for the PC video. We love cheesy in 5A!
Now go read some Shakespeare. Or Ayn Rand!
xo
Thanks for the link to the Peace Corps song. That guy is now my new favorite artist! =D