by cameron | Jun 7, 2008 | Cuba, Iraq, US politics
So much for being “The Land Of The Free”: Human Rights Watch has just posted up the latest stats which show the USA incarcerates nearly 7 times the number of it’s citizens are other democracies such as the UK and Canada.
Statistics released today by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a branch of the US Department of Justice, show that as of June 30, 2007, approximately 2.3 million persons were incarcerated in US prisons and jails, an all-time high. This represents an incarceration rate of 762 per 100,000 US residents, the highest such rate in the world. By contrast, the United Kingdom’s incarceration rate is 152 per 100,000 residents; the rate in Canada is 108; and in France it is 91.
“The new incarceration figures confirm the United States as the world’s leading jailer,†said David Fathi, US program director at Human Rights Watch. “Americans should ask why the US locks up so many more people than do Canada, Britain, and other democracies.â€
He goes on to say even though the majority of drug users in America are white, the majority of people imprisoned on drug charges are black.
“The ‘war on drugs’ has become a war on black Americans.â€
So let’s see:
- America jails more of it’s people than any other country in the world (including Cuba, Iraq, Russia and China)
- America has more gun deaths per capita (by a huge margin) than any other country in the world.
- America has more nuclear weapons than any other country in the world.
- America has financed more terrorism and supported more dictators than any other country in the world in the last century.
The question in my mind is: Is America the most violent country in the world? And why, when they have it so good?
by cameron | Jun 5, 2008 | climate change, environment, Podcast, Video
I had the pleasure once again today to catch up with Dr Peter Ellyard, Australia’s leading futurist, one of our most popular public speakers and, of course, author of the historic first book published by TPNTXT:
“Designing 2050: Pathways to sustainable prosperity on spaceship earth”.
The auction for two signed proof copies of the book can be found here. The auction ends 15-Jun-08Â 22:11:27 AEST.
You can buy a new copy of “Designing 2050”, either in paperback or ebook format, here.
Watch the video interview:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_iRu1uOx8A&hl=en&fs=1]
by cameron | Jun 5, 2008 | science, Uncategorized
From the “Just-Cuz-We-Say-We’re-Going-To-Do-Something-Doesn’t-Mean-We-Will” department:
The Center for Science in the Public Interest points out that ExxonMobil has just announced “for the second consecutive year” that it is cutting funding to groups which promote skepticism about global warming. The groups that are supposedly being cut off include the Capital Research Center, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, Frontiers of Freedom Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute, and the Institute for Energy Research. However, CSPI points out, “Each group continued to receive Exxon funding in 2007 after the company’s first announcement that it would discontinue the payments. Exxon did not immediately return calls seeking comment on how serious it was in following through on its plans.”
(Source: Integrity in Science Watch, June 2, 2008 via PRWatch.org)
It’s easy to companies to make a big splash, put out some advertising, put out a press release, but how often do they actually follow through? And who holds them responsible when they don’t? Perhaps we need more people like Stephen Mayne, who buy shares in these companies, and then rock up to their Annual General Meeting with a video camera to ask the hard questions.
by cameron | Jun 4, 2008 | Australian politics
On Twitter this afternoon I made a crack about how the two-party system we have in Australia is, I believe, fundamentally broken. Someone asked me how I would improve it. This is what I came up with on the fly. This isn’t something I’ve given any thought to previously, so it’s probably full of holes as big as Barnesy’s mouth, but you know me, I’m a shoot-first, think-later kinda guy. I’m certain it isn’t even slightly original. It’s probably discussed in Politics 101 at university but as I didn’t go to university, I missed out.
Let’s scrap all of the political parties.
In fact, let’s scrap elections completely.
Why couldn’t it work like the jury system.
We set up an online Bill submission system. Citizens, businesses, lobby groups, etc, could all enter in their submissions for new laws they want enacted.
Public servants would then arrange for 50 or 100 citizens to be selected at random from the community, jury style, to hear the arguments for and against each submission. After they have heard the evidence and debated it in private, the jury will vote to see which submission deserve further investigation. Two small committees will then be established from the public service to examine the merits of each submission – one for and one against.
Once the committees have their presentations ready, another “jury” will be called to hear the respective arguments. They will hear the “for” argument and the “against” argument, just like hearing the prosecution and the defense in a legal case. Again, this “jury” will deliberate in private and then vote either for or agains the bill.
And so on and so forth.
And we treat being a member of one of these juries with the same seriousness and legal ramifications as we do being a member of a jury today. Tampering with a jury carries maximum penalties.
The benefits? Here are some off the top of my head.
- even if we fly everyone to Canberra for the deliberations, it’s going to save the country millions of dollars a year. The 2004 Federal Election cost $120 million. I have no idea what it costs us every year to run the MPs, but it can’t be pretty. In my system, it would be legislated that the jurors would get leave from their employers at full pay while they were on jury duty. Small businesses (under $10 million in annual revenue) would be compensated for this expense.
- we would get rid of professional politicians for good and all of the problems that this system entails. Lobby groups wouldn’t be able to buy off anyone, because juries would rotate constantly. Nobody gets to retire from politics and become a director of a mining company as a reward for Bills passed or get paid $US500,000 per speaking engagement.
- we’d get rid of party politics. Hooray.
- it won’t just be the wealthy members of society making the decisions. Federal backbenchers now get paid $127,000 pa plus benefits whereas half the households in Australia have a pre-tax income of less than $80,826. And that’s leaving out the politicians who are already insanely wealthy such as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull.
So – as always feel free to tell me where I’m wrong. You know I love a good debate.
(photo by tassie303)
by cameron | Jun 4, 2008 | Uncategorized
Here’s something I learned this morning – how to quickly set up a Gmail filter to delete multiple annoying messages. This may not be news to most of you but as it was a new discovery for me, I thought I’d share it.
Find Annoying Messages – you know those ones that you find yourself deleting day after day after day from the same people? Some of them will be from mailing lists you signed up for when you decided you really were doing to take your diet seriously – this time, I mean it, I really, really mean it – until you re-discovered the delights of the Timus Tamus.
Check Annoying Messages – Of course you can open up the emails and click on the link to unsubscribe yourself from the mailing list, but this is much quicker. Until today I didn’t realize I could filter multiple messages at once.
The you tell Gmail you want to “Filter Messages Like These”:
Gmail creates an “OR” boolean filter which you can then tell it to delete.
So from then on, I hope, Gmail will automatically delete (or you could tell it to mark them as read and archive them, just in case you might want to read them later) all future emails from any of those addresses.
Okay… only 549 more messages to deal with this morning before I deserve an espresso….
