Frogs for Snakes

Yesterday, at the beginning of their annual goal-setting retreat, some members of Boulder City Council publically questioned the wisdom of considering an emergency ordinance that would allow camping in public places in Boulder.

The action was taken in responce to intense lobbying by 60 or so members of the “homeless community”[1], many telling heart-wrenching stories, no doubt true, of their travails. The mayor admitted to feeling “boxed-in”, others, according to the Daily Camera, pointing out that they should avoid rash decisions based on emotions but should, rather, think policy decisions through [my words] before acting.

No one wants to appear heartless, especially when the cameras are on, and collectively we have failed our least privileged in this country, but allowing camping in public parks[2] would have effectively denied their use by the rest of the population which seems to violate most notions of justice.

Of course, now council might seem to be willing to tell people whatever they want to hear to get them off their back only to reneg later (“tell us yes but do us no”  in one of my father’s favorite phrases), making them just like every other group of politicians in the world, so it will be interesting to see how they handle not THIS issue so much as similar situations in the future.

Anyway, they deserve some credit for re-thinking the situation, though I’m pretty sure some private communications from constituents helped motivate that.

[1] A ridiculous term, I think. “Community” denotes a social coherence that just isn’t there–this was lobbying by members of an interest group, but the syntax is awkward: “…members of the homeless interest group…” just doesn’t ring.

[2] That’s assumed by many to be the outcome of an ordinance that halts issuing tickets for camping in public places.

We in the U.S. tend to be “100-percenters”, able to recognize and willing to celebrate victory only when it comes all at once and only when it is complete.

With a feeble attempt to counteract that tendency, I suggest we celebrate the fact that the Kuwaiti high court [BBC] has ruled that women in that Persion Gulf country can obtain a passpost without their husband’s consent, by declating unconstitutional a 1962 that required it.

The New York Times is reporting on tension arising between Russia and members of  the former Soviet Bloc from Russia’s construction of a natural gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea. The pipeline would provide natural gas directly to Western Europe, replacing (or enhancing) distribution networks that currently go through Eastern Europe.

The concern is that the new pipeline will allow Russia to limit supplies to Eastern Europe without impacting deliveries to Western Europe, causing fears that Russia will attempt to re-establish dominance among its neighbors by using the threat of withholding energy supplies as a weapon without risk to their economic ties with Western Europe.

Gazprom, the Russian energy company building the pipeline, claims the endeavor is commercial, not strategic, and that’s almost certainly true, but we should keep in mind the century we live in and remember that distinctions like that, though useful for analysis and conversation, no longer exist in policy-making deliberations.

To cite a single example, in 2006 a deal to contract some services of U.S. ports to a Dubai company came under intense scrutiny and bellicose discussion over security, that is to say, strategic, issues, although the deal was uncontroversial from a commercial standpoint. And we’re the good guys.

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, which opened last month in Saudi Arabia [NYTimes], looks like an intake of fresh air by the most austere of Middle East regimes. On this campus, like no where else in the Kingdom, women can leave their faces unveiled, mix freely with men both in and out of class, and can even drive cars.

Muslim clerics are incensed, of course, and are crying “apostasy!” (and probably worse)–one has even been removed from an official government position for his criticism–but we should recognize this as a serious step towards joining the rest of us in the 21st century.  And you don’t have to like the government to admire the institution.

Aggressive, radical Islamists have an ideological problem with their favorite tactic, terrorism, in that the Qu’ran explicitely forbids the killing of innocents. In Islam, a “fatwa” is a religious ruling that invokes theological arguments to justify actions otherwise forbidden (I apologize if I didn’t get that exactly right), so it’s possible to get around the prohibition, but apparently radical thrologians and ideologues have to expend considerable effort to continue justifying the tactic of terrorism as practised in acts like bombings, which target mainly civilians and often Muslim civilians.

In June, 2008, the New Yorker published an excellent article (that I only recently read) on the renunciation of violence by a former leader of the Egyptian terrorist organization Al Jihad (whose members became the original core of Al Qaeda), and a ideological leader of radical Islamism.

Granted that ideology is only one cause among many for conflict and that the ideology of radical Islam is much more nuanced and complicated than I’m pretending, still the idea of an ideological vulnerability makes me oddly hopeful that this scourge of violent religious extremism can be defeated.