"Those attacking Assange are criminalizing journalistic activity." ---Mark Stephens.
Yes: indeed. The shame of it is that many in the mass media in the developed world, including the United States are making themselves active accomplices in the criminalization of normal journalistic activity. There seems to be this belief that places like the United States are beyond good and evil, when it comes to journalistic activities that their governments do not like.
Imagine, the kinds of mass media campaigns journalists and writers in the United States and other developed countries in Europe would be waging against the Iranian government, if it charged an Iranian journalist with terrorism, for releasing secret Iranian documents on its nuclear program to the New York Times, the London Times and to Google.
I thank you.
Fubara David-West.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
The Blight of Sharia in Nigeria
The Cultural Blight of Sharia in Nigeria
By Fubara David-West
"Judge Isiyaku Mohammed said under the constitution, the federal court could not intervene in the affairs of an Islamic court."
--from a report about a Nigerian court's ruling
This kind of an outrageous judicial arrangement should not be allowed to continue, if indeed Judge Mohammed is making a point that is recognized as valid by any other legal mind in the country. The Nigerian constitution is fundamentally flawed, if it recognizes the superiority of the so-called Islamic courts over the federal courts, which will include the Nigerian Supreme Court.
It must be understood, that the arrangement, as it is interpreted by Judge Mohammed here, implies that the fundamental tenets of equality before the law are violated in jurisprudential practice. Those Nigerians, who come under the jurisdiction of the so-called Islamic courts are in effect, superior to other Nigerians.
It should be possible under such an arrangement, for some states to start setting up "Christian Courts," whose rulings will also be beyond the review of the Nigerian Supreme Court. Nigerians may then be subject to the death penalty, in some states, for instance, for breaking the Sabbath, by a strict interpretation of the Old Testament. What a cultural blight that will be!
Some people in Nigeria might just love to live in a medieval civilization, where religious injunctions and primitive concepts of justice rule, but they should not be able to tell the rest of the country that theirs is a superior value system, which must be accepted by the rest of the country.
The so-called Sharia Courts cannot have veto powers over the Federal courts, and especially not over the Nigerian Supreme Court. They cannot have veto powers over the rest of the judiciary, period. Indeed, their primitive cultural basis, tells us that the so-called Sharia courts should not even be recognized as real courts in the national scheme of things.
By Fubara David-West
"Judge Isiyaku Mohammed said under the constitution, the federal court could not intervene in the affairs of an Islamic court."
--from a report about a Nigerian court's ruling
This kind of an outrageous judicial arrangement should not be allowed to continue, if indeed Judge Mohammed is making a point that is recognized as valid by any other legal mind in the country. The Nigerian constitution is fundamentally flawed, if it recognizes the superiority of the so-called Islamic courts over the federal courts, which will include the Nigerian Supreme Court.
It must be understood, that the arrangement, as it is interpreted by Judge Mohammed here, implies that the fundamental tenets of equality before the law are violated in jurisprudential practice. Those Nigerians, who come under the jurisdiction of the so-called Islamic courts are in effect, superior to other Nigerians.
It should be possible under such an arrangement, for some states to start setting up "Christian Courts," whose rulings will also be beyond the review of the Nigerian Supreme Court. Nigerians may then be subject to the death penalty, in some states, for instance, for breaking the Sabbath, by a strict interpretation of the Old Testament. What a cultural blight that will be!
Some people in Nigeria might just love to live in a medieval civilization, where religious injunctions and primitive concepts of justice rule, but they should not be able to tell the rest of the country that theirs is a superior value system, which must be accepted by the rest of the country.
The so-called Sharia Courts cannot have veto powers over the Federal courts, and especially not over the Nigerian Supreme Court. They cannot have veto powers over the rest of the judiciary, period. Indeed, their primitive cultural basis, tells us that the so-called Sharia courts should not even be recognized as real courts in the national scheme of things.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Obama's Waterloo?
Obama's Waterloo?
The Federal Government has to spend, in order to provide liquidity in the market, during periods of economic contraction. That becomes even more critical, when a major factor in the contraction is the failure of the free market, in such areas as the management of supply and demand, and the proper valuation of asset, risks and opportunities.
The problem for the Obama administration is that for a long time Americans have been told that the free market alone is the key to prosperity. Government should not only leave Wall Street alone, to make up the rules of the road, but also avoid taxing citizens to pay for the things that they want from government.
Even the massive failure of the market that brought on the current recession has not been sobering enough, to dispel those faulty notions about the economy and the role of the government. As long as the United States could borrow massive amounts of dollars from places like China, the people could live large in their fiscal unreality. President Reagan, for instance, was a major political actor to tell the people in the 1980s that borrow and spend was preferable to tax and spend, and that government was the problem not the solution. His influence is still palpable in Republican circles.
Thus, two years after the big economic melt-down, President Obama's political opponents are telling the people, once again, that the problem with their situation in the economy is the government. See, they say, Obama had his stimulus dollars, and yet the economic situation remains as bleak as ever. All of the spending has been wasteful! Of course, they are wrong.
They forget that the economic crisis started under a Republican president, whose solution just before he left office, as the economy was sinking was to pour billions of dollars into Wall Street firms. President Obama followed that precedence. The valid criticism of the president is that he followed it with so much faith, instead of ensuring that Main Street was made the focus of the recovery under his watch.
Imagine what the situation would have been today, if the president's stimulus package had dedicated close to a trillion dollars to buy up most of the troubled mortgages in the United States, as a means of resetting those mortgages at today's interest rates for 15 to 30 years. In order to boost the political support for such a program, all mortgages might have been qualified for the modification, solving much of the mortgage problems at the roots of the recession. The Fannie Mae corporation might have been used to make the entire program automatic.
The economic situation would have been dramatically different today. However, politics is the art of the possible, and Charles E. Lindblom (1977) reminds us that in systems such as this, business occupies a privileged position, which any president will ignore to his own peril. Wall Street and business will have the upper hand.
I thank you.
Fubara David-West
---
The Federal Government has to spend, in order to provide liquidity in the market, during periods of economic contraction. That becomes even more critical, when a major factor in the contraction is the failure of the free market, in such areas as the management of supply and demand, and the proper valuation of asset, risks and opportunities.
The problem for the Obama administration is that for a long time Americans have been told that the free market alone is the key to prosperity. Government should not only leave Wall Street alone, to make up the rules of the road, but also avoid taxing citizens to pay for the things that they want from government.
Even the massive failure of the market that brought on the current recession has not been sobering enough, to dispel those faulty notions about the economy and the role of the government. As long as the United States could borrow massive amounts of dollars from places like China, the people could live large in their fiscal unreality. President Reagan, for instance, was a major political actor to tell the people in the 1980s that borrow and spend was preferable to tax and spend, and that government was the problem not the solution. His influence is still palpable in Republican circles.
Thus, two years after the big economic melt-down, President Obama's political opponents are telling the people, once again, that the problem with their situation in the economy is the government. See, they say, Obama had his stimulus dollars, and yet the economic situation remains as bleak as ever. All of the spending has been wasteful! Of course, they are wrong.
They forget that the economic crisis started under a Republican president, whose solution just before he left office, as the economy was sinking was to pour billions of dollars into Wall Street firms. President Obama followed that precedence. The valid criticism of the president is that he followed it with so much faith, instead of ensuring that Main Street was made the focus of the recovery under his watch.
Imagine what the situation would have been today, if the president's stimulus package had dedicated close to a trillion dollars to buy up most of the troubled mortgages in the United States, as a means of resetting those mortgages at today's interest rates for 15 to 30 years. In order to boost the political support for such a program, all mortgages might have been qualified for the modification, solving much of the mortgage problems at the roots of the recession. The Fannie Mae corporation might have been used to make the entire program automatic.
The economic situation would have been dramatically different today. However, politics is the art of the possible, and Charles E. Lindblom (1977) reminds us that in systems such as this, business occupies a privileged position, which any president will ignore to his own peril. Wall Street and business will have the upper hand.
I thank you.
Fubara David-West
---
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)