Government to announce an estimated £100m to restore services scrapped as part of drive to encourage recycling
Councils are to be offered an estimated £100m to reinstate weekly household rubbish collections cut as part of a drive to encourage more…
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--We put so much refuse into landfill it's time to clean up our act
THE DILEMMA I'm sick of the amount of rubbish my family creates. We seem to throw out more black bags than my neighbours. Any tips?
Down at the dump we've finally reached the tipping…
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--It was a story that any middle-class American would understand. If our family were wealthy or impoverished, society would be happy to meet our needs. But for those of us who are middle class, there is little help.Barbara Bush Turns 86: Aging in America is Easier when You're Rich - Yahoo! News
Barbara Bush turned 86 on June 8. She spent the day reading to 20 sick children at a hospital in Portland, Maine.
Bush is fortunate to be spry enough to fly between her homes in Texas and Maine. She's fortunate to be agile enough to do volunteer work. At her age, she's fortunate to still be a fully functioning person.
But there's another way Bush is fortunate: She's lucky her family is wealthy. Because when the time comes when she's no longer spry, agile, or mentally nimble, her family will have the resources to make sure she gets the best home nursing care available.
This isn't true for most of the 9 million seniors who have become so debilitated that their unpaid family members must now care for them. For these people and their families -- and the millions more who will soon be joining them due to our aging population -- elder care is a daily challenge that can strain emotions, family bonds and finances.
My life changed with one phone call in August 2008, when my 80-year-old mother suffered a stroke. I moved from Sacramento to San Diego to help my 81-year-old father care for her. Four months later, my father suffered a stroke, paralyzing him on the right side.
I was now responsible for caring for both my parents. Nothing in my previous experience as a college professor or writer had prepared me for this. Two and a half years later, I am still living in their home, caring for them every day.
All of this would be a lot easier if our family had the financial resources of the Bush family. Perversely, it would also be easier if our family were poor.
I learned this when I called In-Home Supportive Services, the California state agency that places caregivers in the homes of infirm seniors. This was my conversation with the caseworker:
"What is your parents' monthly income?"
I gave her the figure.
"I'm sorry, but they don't qualify. Their income is too high."
"But they're both disabled. Isn't there some way to get help?"
"Actually, I do know one thing people have tried. I wouldn't do it myself, but it might work for you."
"What is it?"
"They could get a divorce."
"A divorce?"
"Their individual incomes might be low enough if you split the amount by getting them divorced. Then they'd qualify for a caregiver."
I wasn't going to ask my parents to get a divorce. They are a loving couple who have been married for 53 years. Besides, if my parents got a divorce and my dad passed away, my mom would lose his pension, including the health insurance policy it provides.
It was a story that any middle-class American would understand. If our family were wealthy or impoverished, society would be happy to meet our needs. But for those of us who are middle class, there is little help.
We caregivers have made the personal sacrifices and we have stepped up. The work we do for free is worth $350 billion a year. If not for us, our parents would run through their assets and become dependent on society.
We and the people we care for need tax breaks, respite services, and government-screened home health attendants.
Barbara Bush is a human being. She deserves to live her final years in dignity and freedom in her own home. But you know what? So do my parents -- and so do yours.
Thousands of women took part in a so-called Slut Walk in London on Saturday, insisting that they should be able to wear as much or as little as they like without facing sexual harassment by men.
The colourful march saw most people wearing everyday clothing but some wore provocative outfits as they marched on London's central Trafalgar Square.
Slut Walk was first held in Toronto earlier this year after a police officer caused outrage by stating that "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised" during a speech to university students.
The protest soon spread to cities around the world where women joined in huge numbers to challenge the mindset that victims of sexual assault should bear a degree of responsibility on the grounds that they were "asking for it".
The London march kicked off behind a banner reading "Slut Walk London: because we've had enough".
Others carried placards reading "It's a dress, not a yes"; "Women against rape"; "No means no" and "Hijabs, hoodies, hotpants, our bodies, our choices".
One sign read "We are all chambermaids" -- a reference to the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sex case.
The former International Monetary Fund chief has pleaded not guilty to seven counts of sex crimes, including attempted rape, against a 32-year-old woman cleaning his New York hotel suite.
"It's not the victim's fault if they're raped. Some men think they own the right to women's bodies," 25-year-old student Sofia Capel told AFP.
Casually dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, Rachel Sullivan, 35, who works with adults with learning difficulties, said: "I reserve the right to dress as I like.
"It's unusual for us in England to demonstrate like this, but this is too much, what this policeman said."
A man and a woman, walking arm in arm, both wore bras and had the word "slut" written across the midriff.
Student Liz Kedde, 27, wore a see-through top over her bra.
"I think it's important that women are not seen as disposable," she said, adding: "I never dress like this in the daytime, of course."
Several men joined the protest, among them Andy Fell, a 27-year-old sound engineer.
"I came to show my solidarity with my girlfriend, and with the issue as well," he said.
Princes William and Harry have resorted to writing their initials on the soles of their shoes after finding they kept picking up the wrong ones in their shared flat in London, a report said Sunday.
The secret was revealed when someone spotted a "W" daubed on William's shoes at a charity gala he attended with his new wife Catherine this week, the Sunday Times reported.
The newlyweds are sharing a flat in Clarence House with Harry until they move into their own place at Kensington Palace.
"William and Harry are similar in shoe size, so I think this is his way of making sure he's wearing the right shoes. It's quite sweet, really," a royal source told the weekly newspaper.
William and Catherine live in north Wales most of the time, where the prince works as a search and rescue helicopter pilot, but stay in London when they attend official engagements.
Ask the doctor: Should I be worried about X-rays giving me cancer?
By Dr Martin Scurr
On a recent appointment for a mammogram, I was told I’d be given two X-rays of each breast, but instead of four I was given six altogether. I am concerned at the amount of radiation I’ve been given. Couldn't this in itself cause breast cancer?
Linda Owen, Liverpool
Radiation worries: Studies show that when we weigh up the risks against the benefits, the analysis is in favour of using x-rays
Radiation worries: Studies show that when we weigh up the risks against the benefits, the analysis is in favour of using x-rays
Your anxiety is understandable, and you’re not alone in your concern that the X-rays used in mammogram examinations could cause cancerous change in breast tissue.
Indeed, it is known X-rays potentially damage the genetic material in cells and bring about malignant changes. However, I hope I can put your mind at rest, despite your recent experience.
The most important point is that cancer caused by radiation is dose-dependent — the more you receive, the higher the risk of genetic mutations. The amount of radiation needed for a mammogram is very small.
In fact, the amount of radiation you receive with four mammogram X-rays is about the same as the amount you experience in an aircraft flight over the Atlantic.
Radiation coming at the Earth from space is mostly absorbed by the atmosphere, and so you’re exposed to more when travelling at 35,000 ft.
With the six exposures during your mammogram, you’d have absorbed half that amount again — in total, about the amount of radiation you experience in a single X-ray of the chest.
The damage caused by X-rays is cumulative, adding up over the years. Despite this, studies show that when we weigh up the risks against the benefits, the analysis is in favour of regular screening mammograms.
The NHS breast cancer screening policy is to offer mammography every three years to women from the age of about 50. But I believe they should be also conducted in women in their 40s.
Of the 9,000 women who get breast cancer each year under the age of 50, only 2 per cent are diagnosed by screening. But in women of 50 or older, 55 per cent of cancers are detected by the screening programme.
And we know that if a breast cancer is detected by screening, the prognosis is twice as good due to the fact that the cancer is caught so much earlier.
What this tells us is that screening of women in younger age groups is valid. By 2013, the Government plans to extend screening to those who are 47 and older, which is at least a start. And new technologies offer advances.
By using digital photography for mammograms, the radiation dose is 22 per cent lower than that of conventional X-ray film mammography because less radiation is required.
Further, in younger women, who have denser breast tissue due to the higher levels of the hormone oestrogen in their systems, digital mammography can detect significantly more cancers.
This means that in this group of patients fewer small cancers are missed — by at least 25 per cent — compared to the older technique of film mammography.
In summary, be confident about what happened to you. There’s no need to worry.
CNSNews.com) -- The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAA), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will pay $2.6 million in U.S. tax dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly on the job.
Dr. Xiaoming Li, the researcher conducting the program, is director of the Prevention Research Center at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit.
The grant, made last November, refers to prostitutes as "female sex workers"--or FSW--and their handlers as "gatekeepers."
"Previous studies in Asia and Africa and our own data from FSWs [female sex workers] in China suggest that the social norms and institutional policy within commercial sex venues as well as agents overseeing the FSWs (i.e., the 'gatekeepers', defined as persons who manage the establishments and/or sex workers) are potentially of great importance in influencing alcohol use and sexual behavior among establishment-based FSWs," says the NIH grant abstract submitted by Dr. Li.
"Therefore, in this application, we propose to develop, implement, and evaluate a venue-based alcohol use and HIV risk reduction intervention focusing on both environmental and individual factors among venue-based FSWs in China," says the abstract.
The research will take place in the southern Chinese province of Guangxi.
Guangxi is ranked third in HIV rate among Chna's provinces--and is a place where the sex business is pervasive, Li said.
“The purpose of the project is to try and develop an intervention program targeting HIV risk and alcohol use,” Li told CNSNews.com. “So basically, it’s an alcohol and HIV risk reduction intervention project."
The researcher outlined three components of the intervention program in the abstract for the project:
“(1) gatekeeper training with a focus on changing or enhancing the protective social norms and policy/practice at the establishment level; (2) FSW (female sex workers) training with a focus on the acquisition of communication skills (negotiating, limit setting) and behavioral skills (e.g., condom use skills, consistent condom use); and (3) semi-annual boosters to reinforce both social norms within establishments and individual skills,” wrote Li.
The doctor said the heart of the study involves “a community-based cluster randomized controlled trial among 100 commercial sex venues in Beihai, a costal tourist city in Guangxi.”
"We anticipate that the venue-based intervention program will be culturally appropriate, feasible, effective and sustainable in alcohol use and sexual risk reduction among FSWs," says the NIH grant abstract.
Li said his study is being done in China rather than the U.S. because prostitution occurs with alcohol use in the United States like it does in China, Americans will be able to benefit from the project’s findings.
“We want to get some understanding of the fundamental role of alcohol use and HIV risk,” he said. “We use the population in China as our targeted population to look at the basic issues. I think the findings will benefit the American people, too.”
Li said minimal research has been conducted on the link between alcohol use and prostitution as it relates to HIV.
“Alcohol has been a part of the commerce of sex for many, many years. Unfortunately, both global-wise (and) in the United States, very few researchers are looking at the complex issue of the inter play between alcohol and the commerce of sex,” he told CNSNews.com.
The grant is one of several “international initiatives” sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.
Ralph Hingson, director of epidemiology and prevention research at NIAA, told CNSNews.com, “There are many Americans who travel to China each year and they should be made aware of the HIV problem.”
Hingson said that Americans will be able to apply the studies findings to the American situation because 1.2 million Americans are currently living with HIV.
Li’s research includes exploration, development, implementation and evaluation. Currently, the project stands at the exploration stage, which the doctor expects to last 18 months.
“The first phase is kind of an exploratory study just trying to get a good understanding of the phenomena in the population of female sex workers in China. The second phase is the program development,” the professor told CNSNews.com.
Phase two will be based on the first year of the study and on “field observations,” he added. The third phase will be the implementation and evaluation of the program.
“Prostitution is illegal in China but it exists in China," Li told CNSNews.com, “but the Chinese government and the society’s attitude towards prostitution is complicated.”
According to Li, there may be as many as 10 million female prostitutes in China with the majority raging from teenagers to those in their 20s.
“We see a lot of governmental initiatives in China, like 100 percent condom distribution promotion programs, so they deliver condoms in those (prostitution) venues," he added.
“The global literature indicates an important role of alcohol use in facilitating HIV/AIDS transmission risk in commercial sex venues where elevated alcohol use/abuse and sexual risk behaviors frequently co-occur,” Li wrote when introducing the project last November.
"We expect that the intervention will improve protective normative beliefs and institutional support regarding alcohol use and HIV protection,” he added.
The NIH proposal hypothesizes that the program will decrease "problem drinking and alcohol-related sexual risk" among prostitutes that participate.
"We hypothesize that the venue-based intervention will change and enhance the protective social norms and institutional policies at the establishment level and such enhancement, accompanied by individual skill training among FSWs, will demonstrate a sustainable effect within commercial sex establishments in decreasing problem drinking and alcohol-related sexual risk, increasing consistent and correct condom use, and reducing rates of HIV/STD infection among FSWs," says the NIH abstract.
ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill. – Robert Adams craved an ice-cold drink after finishing his shift on a sweltering workday, but not having enough money to buy the burrito he also wanted left him with two obvious choices: Stop at the ATM, or find a bag containing more than $17,000 in cash.
"I wanted to get a large horchata, which is almost like a rice or coconut milk," Adams told the Daily Herald (Arlington Heights) for a story published Wednesday. "I would have grabbed a chorizo burrito, too, but I didn't have enough money."
That changed Monday when the Chicago-area man stood at a Chase ATM in Rolling Meadows, looked down and discovered on the sidewalk near a newspaper box a clear plastic bag containing receipts, checks and $17,021 in cash — mostly $20 and $100 bills bound by a rubber band.
"I see this plastic bag. It's clear plastic and it's half full of money," Adams said. "I figure this is a joke. Somebody took some napkins and made it look like money. This has to be a setup. People are going to look at me and start laughing."
Adams said he never had the urge to keep any of the money.
"It's not my money. I shouldn't take it. I don't care if you put another zero on there, I wasn't raised to take money that isn't mine," said Adams, a 54-year-old single man who lives in Arlington Heights and credits his deceased parents for teaching him right from wrong. "If I saw you drop it, I'd say, `Excuse me, sir. I think you dropped something.'"
The word "Chase" was printed on the bag, so Adams carried it inside the nearby branch.
"I walk up to the teller and say, `I think you might have left this outside,'" said Adams, figuring an employee left it behind after restocking the ATM. But employees told him the machine is filled from inside and the money didn't belong to the bank.
Adams then called police, who along with bank officials later determined the money was meant for an ATM in Midlothian and had been under the care of Loomis, an armored truck company. Rolling Meadows police took the money to the station, where it was picked up by a Loomis official.
Loomis officials said they were investigating, but have not said whether Adams will get a reward.
"I really don't know what happens with this situation," Adams said.
Onesimo Santillan, owner of the Senor Taco restaurant where Adams originally was headed to indulge his cravings, said the actions of his longtime customer don't surprise him.
"He has been coming in for years, always orders the same thing, very nice guy," Santillan said. "It's hard to find people like that, honest people."
Rolling Meadows Police Chief Dave Scanlan said Adams did good: "We all said right away that this guy deserves something — credit for being an Honest Abe."
___
A new Australian study says that a serious coffee habit can make people see and hear imaginary things (involving Bing Crosby). Time to put down the java?
People guzzle coffee as if it's just another beverage, but the ostensibly safe comfort drink is laced with a "psychoactive drug": caffeine. In fact, stressed-out people who drink five cups or more a day are vulnerable to hallucinations, says researcher Simon Crow of Australia's La Trobe University. Crow's team found, for instance, that highly caffeinated people were three times more likely than a control group to erroneously hear Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" in white noise. They're also "more likely to notice things that aren't there, see things that aren't there." Will such findings scare people away from java... or make them drink more?
Bring on the buzz: "Hours of hallucinogenic fun" sounds like a "bonus side effect" to me, says Margaret Hartmann at Jezebel. And here I thought coffee "couldn't get any better!" Still, the study involved only 92 subjects — a very small sample — and used a questionable methodology, so maybe the real lesson is that "if you're hopped up on Starbucks, just ignore any scientists trying to screw with you."
"Coffee's bonus side effect: Hours of hallucinogenic fun"
I want to wake up, not trip out: This could be for real, says Jamie Feldmar at Gothamist. A larger 2009 study also found that "people riding high on three cups of coffee were three times more likely to see or hear things that aren't there." That's some pretty "freaky-sounding stuff." Tripping on espresso might be "kind of a neat party trick," but this study is bad news "for everyday drinkers who don't want to be That Scary Guy on the train."
"Whoa: Coffee may cause auditory hallucinations, says science"
Enough with the coffee studies: Doesn't it feel like we've been here before? asks Adrian Chen at Defamer. Every few minutes, there's a new study "about coffee being good or bad for you, giving you a heart attack or sharpening your concentration." Honestly, I'm not sure what to make of this one. Hearing "the baleful moan of an ancient forest sprite" while you're "trippin' on the sweet black stuff" might make it hard to concentrate, but it would "really wake you up, too!"
"Coffee might make you hear things"
A bedraggled Alec Baldwin emerges from his home, cutting an unlikely figure of a would-be mayoral candidate.
Amid reports the 30 Rock actor is set to run for the position in New York, he was spotted in Manhattan today sporting a scruffy beard and casual, baggy clothes.
The 53-year-old actor might want to think about smartening up his act if he is to be taken seriously.
The Earth says : "Do I have to spell it out for you? Get the fuck out of here. I want you to leave now."EARTH—According to a statement released to the press Tuesday, the planet Earth has "just about run out of ways" to let its roughly 6.9 billion human inhabitants know it wants them all to leave.
Laba bersih KRAS pada 2010 lalu mencetak angka Rp 1.062 triliun dan sebanyak 98%-nya akan dibagikan sebagai dividen senilai Rp1.051 triliun pada 15 Juli mendatang.
Mengenai proyek blast furnace yang ramai dibicarakan sebelumnya, pada akhirnya pihak KRAS berencana mengakuisisi salah satu perusahaan penambang batubara di Kalimantan Selatan untuk memasok kebutuhan batubara yang digunaka. Dana investasi akan didapatkan dari beberapa bank besar, salah satunya adalah Bank Mandiri.
Pada perdagangan Kamis (9/6) kemarin, KRAS ditutup di level Rp1.140 atau naik 20 poin (1,79%). Emiten ini diperdagangkan sebesar 52.46 juta lembar saham, senilai Rp58.53 miliar.
Francis Fukuyama has just published a new book, “The Origins of Political Order,” which looks at the development of political institutions from ancient China to the French Revolution. He spoke with Global Viewpoint Network contributing editor Michael Skafidas in New York.
Michael Skafidas: It is surprising that your book is not Eurocentric. You bring China to the foreground as the first society to develop state institutions. As you claim, “Many of the elements of what we now understand to be a modern state appeared far earlier in history than did the Industrial Revolution and the modern capitalist economy; these elements were already in place in China in the Third Century BC.” At the end, as you suggest, “China’s pioneering experience is seldom referred to in Western accounts of political development.” Why do you think that is the case?
Francis Fukuyama: Part of the problem is that China’s history is long and so complex that is very hard for people to grasp the totality of it. Most people in the West are unfamiliar with pre-20th century Chinese history. They only know the Qing Dynasty, which was the last dynasty that decayed and was finally displaced by the nationalist revolution in the early 20th century. When Westerners think of historical China, their knowledge doesn’t go back more than two or three hundred years
This is a big problem because that dynasty at that point in China’s history was actually quite decayed and ossified. It was really not representative of what China was like in earlier periods. Of course, China also experienced political decay not just in the Qing Dynasty but also periodically in its 2,500-year history. So, it depends on what period of China you examine before you can make assertions about how strong its institutions were.
What the West can learn from ChinaSkafidas: Your mentor, the late Samuel Huntington, once told me that “the West has a lot of things to learn from other civilizations, and it’s a fact that the leaders of nations such as China and Japan always try to transfuse some of their own elements to the West. The West can only benefit from such an exchange.â€
Yet the West has always resisted this exchange until now, when China and India are becoming economic giants. Now there is no other alternative but to accept this exchange.
Fukuyama: In general, Huntington was right that even if these countries were not economically successful, there would still be important things to learn from them. For example, the Chinese were always very good at high-quality bureaucratic government in a way that Western societies haven’t been.
Learning from that experience is a much more urgent matter when these countries have become quite powerful and there is a strong need to understand their particular strengths and weaknesses. One of the problems with the United States over the last generation is that Americans haven’t felt there was much to learn from the rest of the world because America was so dominant and English a more or less universal language. The world has changed, but Americans haven’t yet caught up.
The failures of neoconservatismSkafidas: Once you were a fervent supporter of the neoconservative movement. Then you became disillusioned and you abandoned it. What disillusioned you the most of the ills of neoconservatism? Its overly hegemonic aspirations; the war in Iraq, which you initially supported and later condemned; the distrust of the welfare system; or the rejection of the government regulation of the economy, which led to the disastrous downfall of 2008?
Fukuyama: Well, first of all, there isn’t a neoconservative movement as such in the way that there was a communist movement, for example. It was not that organized. It was just a group of intellectuals with a worldview. But there was no neoconservative view on the economy. In fact, Irving Kristol, who was the father of neoconservatism, once wrote a book called “Two Cheers for Capitalism” in which he argued that capitalism had some good points but that it was also morally questionable.
So we shouldn’t confuse neoconservatism with libertarianism or Reaganism because they were not necessarily the same thing. The movement really emerged in the 1930s, when there was a split between communists and their sympathizers and those in the existence of universal democratic values.
That’s something I continue to believe. My main argument with the way neoconservatism evolved in the 2000s was that it was too much dependent and associated with American military power, which I thought was a limited instrument and was not being applied properly in Iraq or in the war on terror. But the belief that democracy is a universal value, that American power can be used positively if done prudently – that I still believe.
Osama bin Laden's death means most to USSkafidas: Aside from its emotional impact, do you see any further value in the killing of Osama bin Laden for America?
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Fukuyama: I don’t think that Al Qaeda was actually that important of a political force even before Osama bin Laden’s killing. The main current in the Arab world had been rather different for some time. As we’ve seen lately, they’re really interested now in democracy and the struggle against authoritarian government. In a sense, the killing of Osama is probably more satisfying for Americans than it is for anyone in the Middle East.
The erosion of the European UnionSkafidas: You claim in your new book that “once a society fails to confront a major fiscal crisis through serious institutional reform ... it is tempted to resort to a host of short-term fixes that erode and eventually corrupt its own institutions.”
Using as an example France and the inability of the French monarchy to restore balance after the failure of the Grand Parti in 1557, you conclude that the failure to balance the country’s budget led to bankruptcy and the de-legitimization of the state itself, a course that finally resulted in the French Revolution.
Today, many countries of the EU, from Greece to Portugal, are facing just such a crisis. Is the whole European project losing its legitimacy and becoming destabilized?
Fukuyama: Yes, the sovereign debt crisis has already been destabilizing the European Union. Further, fiscal crisis is not just a basic problem for Europe, but for the US and Japan as well.
The only way to ultimately resolve this crisis is to renegotiate the social contract on which the modern democratic world is based, because it’s not sustainable. It was negotiated at a time when people did not live as long and birthrates were higher. But now you’ve got this real demographic shift that has been going on for the last generation where there are not enough in the young working population to support their elders at the level which they expect and have been promised. That makes a renegotiation necessary.
The other thing is that a lot of countries, like Greece, never really engaged in the liberalization of the labor market or other reforms that were necessary to improve their productivity. So their lack of competitiveness is simultaneously on the table for them along with restoring fiscal prudence.
What makes Europe’s crisis so severe is that there isn’t a strong sense of a Europe-wide solidarity. The Germans are hardly playing a visionary role in providing leadership.
Why Europeans don't like outsidersSkafidas: That brings to mind an observation you made in one of your previous books, “Trust,” about “the higher degree of mutual trust between labor and management in Germany in comparison to less communally oriented societies.” That seems to be one of the most challenging problems behind Europe’s current state of financial troubles – the unbridgeable mentality of its diverse national constituents. Would you agree?
Fukuyama: A lot of times the high degree of trust within a society entails a lower degree of trust for people outside of that society. That may be the case with Germans. They dealt with their need for economic reform quite successfully. They freed up their labor markets and became much more competitive over the past 10-15 years. Now they expect other people to behave like them, and when they don’t, they are not very sympathetic. It’s an illustration of the fact that you do have solidarity in national terms, but not in broader European terms.
History is the result of unforeseen circumstancesSkafidas: In “The Origins of Political Order,” you clarify that “countries are not trapped by their pasts even though in many cases things that happened a long time ago continue to exert influence on the nature of politics.” You note that institutions of governance emerge more often than not from contingent, unforeseen circumstances rather than some advance theory.
Fukuyama: In taking the long view of political development, one thing that comes through fairly clearly is the fact that the evolution of institutions is often the result of contingent, accidental circumstances. In a way, the rule of law is the result of the Catholic Church’s quest for independence in the 11th century. The rise of democracy is due to the survival of feudal institutions in England. Parliamentary government emerged from the need to balance the power of new and old forces.
History should give people a better appreciation of the fact that their institutions are the product of a certain amount of luck. Now, I do think that it is also the case that once a certain institutional form proves itself to be stable and powerful and regarded as legitimate, it also tends to spread. That is what has been happening with democracy over the last few years. The recent Arab uprising that has seen democracy spread “organically” should give us Americans a more humble sense of the limits of nation-building, of trying to implant institutions in other societies.
Money's corruption of politicsSkafidas: In the third millennium, it seems that politics, like showbiz, like art and sports and education, has fallen under the spell of money. Doesn’t that ultimately undermine the ideals of liberal democracy?
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Fukuyama: Well, I am not sure that this is a particular change. Politics and money have always been related. In a lot of less developed societies you have this phenomenon of patronage, which is a universal phenomenon in politics. In certain ways, politics is less corrupt in a lot of European and North American societies than it was a hundred years ago. On the other hand, interest-group politics has replaced the earliest forms of patronage in ways that can be quite damaging to the legitimacy of the democratic system. I do think that in that respect there is a big problem with democracy today.
Why I met with Libya's QaddafiSkafidas: Is it true that you actually spent some time advising the leader of Libya, Muammar Qaddafi on behalf of the consulting firm Monitor Group in 2007-2008?
Fukuyama: No, I didn’t advise him. He wanted to see me because he read my books, and we had some conversations. This was the period when everyone, I think, was hoping there would be some liberalization of the society, so I thought some form of engagement with him might be able to teach him some things, but I figured out fairly quickly that he was pretty unteachable. He is not open to any new ideas.
Skafidas: Is it feasible to hope that an autocrat can be reversed into a democrat?
Fukuyama: That has happened in cases where authoritarian rulers have given up power voluntarily, or they presided over openings that have surprised people. You have South Africa, Turkey, and in the earlier period you have a number of places – Eastern Europe itself and the former Soviet Union – where nobody expected liberalization.
You are not going to know when this is going to happen ahead of time unless you try to engage people and gauge whether there is some interest in changing course. In the mid-2000s, Qaddafi had given up his nuclear weapons program. He was taken off the terrorism list by the US because he really hadn’t engaged in that sort of activity for quite a while. So I think it was worth it to just see what the limits of reform in those kinds of cases are.
Are we headed for a Frankenstein scenario?Skafidas: In “Our Posthuman Future,” you speculated that “there can be no end of history without an end of modern natural science and technology.” Do you fear some kind of Frankenstein scenario?
Fukuyama: The Frankenstein story is little bit sensational. What is going to happen is the slow accumulation of knowledge about biomedicine is going to enable us to manipulate human behavior in all sorts of new ways. That is really the challenge. A lot of biomedicine, of course, is going to be used for therapeutic purposes, and everybody approves that.
What needs to be injected into public policy are certain considerations about the use of this technology for inappropriate purposes through engineering, the abuse of cloning or the like. I’m not necessarily an optimist when it comes to technology. I think that it needs to be regulated, and right now in the US, in particular, we don’t regulate this form of medicine, and I think we need to.
Democracy is still the endgame of historical progressSkafidas: The impact of “The End of History” – whose optimistic premise after the fall of the Berlin Wall was that all the world’s conflicts will resolve into the model of liberal democracy – elevated you to a rock-star status. Some of your ideas from that book have been used and abused, but they still resonate. Did you ever predict this powerful impact when you were writing it? And do you remain optimistic more than 20 years later?
Fukuyama: No, definitely not! I really didn’t think very many people would read the book. As for the question on optimism, it depends on the timeframe. The basic question was, “Is there a process of modernization that leads to democracy, which makes people better off as a result? Are people better off as a result of that?”
For me, the answer to that question still remains yes. In the short run, meaning the next five to ten years, things can look bad. Obviously after 9/11 we had a lot of problems with religious extremism and setbacks to democracy. But now the Arab Spring may be partially reversing that – but that itself may get reversed. The question is, “In the long run is there such a thing as historical progress?” On that score I still remain optimistic.
© 2011 Global Viewpoint Network/Tribune Media Services. Hosted online by The Christian Science Monitor.
Scandal-scarred Rep. Anthony Weiner is clinging to his perch in Congress despite new efforts to pry him away and a pair of developments that might inspire others in his position to give up the fight:
A newly released X-rated photo that Weiner purportedly took of himself turned up on the Internet.
And his wife of less than a year, Huma Abedin, is pregnant.
The baby on the way complicated an already ominous forecast for the 46-year-old congressman, who admitted on Monday that he had Tweeted sexually charged photos and messages to six women he did not know, then lied about it to his wife, his family and his constituents. Throughout the week, Weiner has refused to resign.
His fellow Democrats from the White House on down have left little doubt they want him to reconsider — and fast.
By Nancy GibbsWhen her husband Dominique Strauss-Kahn was preparing to run for President of France five years ago, Anne Sinclair told a Paris newspaper that she was "rather proud" of his reputation as a ladies' man, a chaud lapin (hot rabbit) nicknamed the Great Seducer.
"It's important," she said, "for a man in politics to be able to seduce."
Maybe it was pride that inspired French politicians and International Monetary Fund officials to look the other way as the rumors about "DSK" piled up, from the young journalist who says Strauss-Kahn tried to rip off her clothes when she went to interview him, to the female lawmaker who describes being groped and pawed and vowed never to be in a room alone with him again, to the economist who argued in a letter to IMF investigators that "I fear that this man has a problem that, perhaps, made him unfit to lead an institution where women work under his command." Maybe it was the moral laziness and social coziness that impel elites to protect their own. Maybe it was a belief that he alone could save the global economy. Maybe nothing short of jail is disqualifying for certain men in certain circles. (See pictures of Dominique Strauss-Kahn.)
But in any event, the arrest of Strauss-Kahn in New York City for allegedly trying to rape a hotel maid has ignited a fierce debate over sex, law, power and privilege. And it is only just beginning. The night of Strauss-Kahn's arraignment, former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted that the reason his wife Maria Shriver walked out earlier this year was the discovery that he had fathered a child more than a decade ago with a former member of the household staff. The two cases are far apart: only one man was hauled off to jail. But both suggest an abuse of power and a betrayal of trust. And both involve men whose long-standing reputations for behaving badly toward women did not derail their rise to power. Which raises the question: How can it be, in this ostensibly enlightened age, when men and women live and work as peers and are schooled regularly in what conduct is acceptable and what is actionable, that anyone with so little judgment, so little honor, could rise to such heights?
Crime and Culture Wars
Let's note first that Strauss-Kahn is innocent until proved guilty and, second, that if he is guilty, he is not a player — he's a predator. This was not just a French version of an American classic, the Family Values Virtuecrat, who preaches by day and trysts by night. Nor was Strauss-Kahn a fallen star like Tiger Woods or Charlie Sheen or one of the libidinous lawmakers and Luv Guvs whose confessions can be as infuriating as their sins. Strauss-Kahn was not accused of seducing his close friend's wife, like former Senator John Ensign, or patronizing prostitutes while prosecuting prostitution rings, like former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, or lying about an affair while impeaching a President for lying about an affair, like Newt Gingrich. On the spectrum that starts at randy, runs through creepy and ends in handcuffs, where DSK belonged became a matter of global dispute even before it became a matter for a grand jury. (See pictures of the career of Arnold Schwarzenegger.)This is what the alleged victim told the police: On May 14, at the Sofitel in midtown Manhattan, the maid, a 32-year-old African immigrant, entered the $3,000-a-night suite around midday to clean, thinking it was empty. When she went into a bedroom, Strauss-Kahn emerged naked from the bathroom; when she apologized and tried to leave, according to a police spokesperson, he chased her down, grabbed her and locked the door. He tried to assault her in the bedroom before dragging her to the bathroom and making her perform oral sex. She eventually fled the suite; hotel staff called the police, who caught up with him sitting in his first-class seat on the Air France flight from JFK to Paris — where he could have been safe from extradition.
See more international news in Global Spin
With his arrest, a transatlantic culture war broke out. Strauss-Kahn was the world's wallet, a shrewd and nimble financier who had rescued the IMF from irrelevance in time to save the European economy. He was the favorite to defeat Nicolas Sarkozy for the French presidency next year. He had friends everywhere who called him far too brilliant to do anything so tawdry, as though being smart and being decent were the same thing. Newspapers in Paris couldn't decide on the headline. "Shock. Political Bomb. Thunderclap," blared the left-leaning paper Libération. The New York Daily News went with "Le Perv." The French, who forbid photographing a suspect in handcuffs on the grounds that it violates the presumption of innocence, were aghast at what followed: "Death by media," one former Socialist minister called it. "If you don't want to do the perp walk, don't do the crime," New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg fired back, which only confirmed the French objection.
Strauss-Kahn was charged with offenses including criminal sex acts, unlawful imprisonment and attempted rape, for which he could face up to 25 years. He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment; his lawyers suggested that whatever might have occurred was consensual. His wife had wired $1 million for bail, they said — but concluding that a man pulled off a flight constituted a flight risk, the judge denied it. (See seven women who chose to stand by their men.)
And so he sat in a cell at Rikers Island, a short flight but a long fall from his $4 million Georgetown home and the life he had come to lead. He was on suicide watch; the victim and her teenage daughter were moved to a safe house to protect them from the cameras — but that did not stop the French press from publishing her name and background or the New York Post from reporting that she was a widow who lives in a Bronx apartment set aside for adults with HIV, a claim her lawyer called "outrageous."
So much for the famous European indifference to the private sex lives of its leaders. DSK's situation is more serious even than that of Italy's embattled Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, 74, who has been on trial for corruption, tax fraud and, most relevant, having sex with an underage prostitute and then using his office to cover it up. These cases are the exception; they will both play out in court, with evidence presented and witnesses called and the conduct of the accused judged by the standards of the law. In many instances of sexual conflict, it never comes to this but unfolds in a murmur of rumors and gossip, even nudges and winks. More often than not, the women involved weigh the stakes and decide to be silent, judging that the burden of proof is high and that they have little to gain and so much to lose. It's no coincidence that when events like this happen, women come out of the shadows to add their testimony; they figure the odds have improved enough that they just might be believed.
See the top 10 abuses of power.
