Human Kite
Winds here are so strong here in the country that the notion of a human kite is as far as you can spread your arms out in the wind. One can actually suffocate from winds walking to lecture. Imagine. Dying on your way to a morning lecture. Double shit. But I didn't and live to do more work piling.
Women...coming right up!
Just an observation from reading the news in the past couple of weeks: a recent number of women breaking the glass ceiling and assuming prominent leadership positions on the international scene.
Democrats have taken the majority in the House of Representatives in the US, they have a woman boss. WHO chief, Deputy Secretary-General of the UN, potential candidate for French top political office, my missus...
I'm glad to see that women rights' activitists are not seeing their good work going to waste in levelling the playing field in a generally patriarcal era we currently live in (and have been for far too long). Equal society, equal opportunities is good, isn't it? Discrimination is bad in general, no? But what troubles me is the notion of "positive discrimination". It is essentially a discriminatory process, with which as advocates of a free and equal society should principally disagree with, but yet it is this process that is touted one of the better means to achieve equality in an already unequal world.
The new UN chief said that he would appoint a woman deputy, and he did. So in this case, is the Tanzanian lady who is now his deputy there because of her merits, or because she is woman? It is fair enough to say she's the woman with the most merits relevant for the position, but essentially she is chosen because she is an Eve-descendant, hence discrimination.
No, don't get me wrong in thinking I'm not supportive of having an African woman as the number two in the UN, but I'm just puzzled by the proposing arguments and opposing ones for "positive discrimination". Possibly there are other substansive means to level the playing field other than appealing to the very principle that made the playing field uneven in the first place.
Uncle T
11 Jan 2007
7 Jan 2007
I don't know. Someone explain the intuition. 3:59 pm
I don't know. Someone explain the intuition.
I find it bewildering, intuitively. One moment they are asking for the empowerment of the fallen people of Iraq; hours of news on the Iraqi people usurp TV air time, there must be a restoration of autonomy in the government of Iraq. Lifes have been lost fighting to return that sovereign right back to the country. Then this autonomy provides a long but conclusive trial on Saddam and sentences him to death, along with his other 2 bigwigs in tow. But the very people who tried to restore the sovereignty of Iraq is condemning not only Saddam's death but trying to intervene and make the Iraqi government reverse its decision on Saddam's other henchmen.
Is the ability to exercise one's own decision not what liberalism fundamentally protects? Is there the West's own brand of liberalism?
Are you seeing why I'm bewildered intuitively? Possibly fathom why hypocracy surfaces in thinking about this? I'm trying to steer clear as much as possible from cynicism as much as possible. Worse, the West (they are generally the ones who wanted Saddam dead and now are the ones who are criticising it and death sentence etc.) are trying to use the UN to pressure for a reversal of the other two hangings of Saddam's accomplices. If the rationale is that this is a principled argument against the death sentence, can there also be a principled argument for the death sentence? Debators would agree with the latter. So why must one principal rule over the other with ubiquitous force when we are not a homogeneous people? Why must the liberals be so unliberal in their thinking, that they come across acting as ducks tripping over their feet? (one moment wanting Saddam dead, the next playing the benovelent saviour).
Liberalism seeks to protect the individual's liberty, and is not the capacity to make one's own decisions a part of that liberty? If yes, then the Western liberal world should at least start trying to even understand that there are possible rational circumstances when the death penalty may be applicable in certain countries. Principled disagreements are to be expected, but if one is a liberal, he/she must be liberal enough to respect the decision-making capacity of another individual no?
Honestly, think about this. I know I may not be totally appealing to the logic behind all this, it is just unnerving that I intuitively feel disconcerted over this, living in a Western society, brought up on Asian values and studying politics.
I don't know. Someone explain the intuition
Uncle T
I find it bewildering, intuitively. One moment they are asking for the empowerment of the fallen people of Iraq; hours of news on the Iraqi people usurp TV air time, there must be a restoration of autonomy in the government of Iraq. Lifes have been lost fighting to return that sovereign right back to the country. Then this autonomy provides a long but conclusive trial on Saddam and sentences him to death, along with his other 2 bigwigs in tow. But the very people who tried to restore the sovereignty of Iraq is condemning not only Saddam's death but trying to intervene and make the Iraqi government reverse its decision on Saddam's other henchmen.
Is the ability to exercise one's own decision not what liberalism fundamentally protects? Is there the West's own brand of liberalism?
Are you seeing why I'm bewildered intuitively? Possibly fathom why hypocracy surfaces in thinking about this? I'm trying to steer clear as much as possible from cynicism as much as possible. Worse, the West (they are generally the ones who wanted Saddam dead and now are the ones who are criticising it and death sentence etc.) are trying to use the UN to pressure for a reversal of the other two hangings of Saddam's accomplices. If the rationale is that this is a principled argument against the death sentence, can there also be a principled argument for the death sentence? Debators would agree with the latter. So why must one principal rule over the other with ubiquitous force when we are not a homogeneous people? Why must the liberals be so unliberal in their thinking, that they come across acting as ducks tripping over their feet? (one moment wanting Saddam dead, the next playing the benovelent saviour).
Liberalism seeks to protect the individual's liberty, and is not the capacity to make one's own decisions a part of that liberty? If yes, then the Western liberal world should at least start trying to even understand that there are possible rational circumstances when the death penalty may be applicable in certain countries. Principled disagreements are to be expected, but if one is a liberal, he/she must be liberal enough to respect the decision-making capacity of another individual no?
Honestly, think about this. I know I may not be totally appealing to the logic behind all this, it is just unnerving that I intuitively feel disconcerted over this, living in a Western society, brought up on Asian values and studying politics.
I don't know. Someone explain the intuition
Uncle T