Published at 08:44 on 17 September 2011
Story here. And no, I don’t think it’s all explainable by the French doctrine of laïcité:
Proponents assert the French state secularism is based on respect for freedom of thought and freedom of religion. Thus the absence of a state religion, and the subsequent separation of the state and Church, is considered by proponents to be a prerequisite for such freedom of thought. Proponents maintain that laïcité is thus distinct from anti-clericalism, which actively opposes the influence of religion and the clergy. Laïcité relies on the division between private life, where adherents believe religion belongs, and the public sphere, in which each individual, adherents believe, should appear as a simple citizen equal to all other citizens, devoid of ethnic, religious or other particularities. According to this conception, the government must refrain from taking positions on religious doctrine and only consider religious subjects for their practical consequences on inhabitants’ lives. [emphasis added]
So while Muslims who pray in public are transgressing the part about keeping their religion private, governments who obsess over collective acts of free expression that involve prayer, while considering other such acts (e.g. street fairs, parades, political demonstrations) legal, are taking positions on religious issue instead of merely considering the practical aspects of a behavior.
Moreover, why pass such a law now, right as the National Front has made public prayer by Muslims a hot-button issue? If street prayer is such a transgression against laïcité, that transgression has been going on for decades. Am I supposed to believe it is mere coincidence that this is happening as an election is coming up, and the governing center-Right party wants to steal some votes from the far-Right one?
Published at 13:16 on 16 September 2011
Yes, it does show that corporate handouts don’t stop at party lines.
And yes, it was a stupid investment. Solyndra’s business plan was fatally flawed: it depended on finding alternatives to silicon for photovoltaic cells, which they presumed was needed because the price of silicon was going up, which they presumed indicated a shortage. Anyone with a few functioning neurons in his or her brain should see the flaw here: silicon isn’t a scarce strategic material. 27% of the Earth’s crust is silicon. Quartz — the most common mineral in the crust — is high-grade silicon ore.
The shortage of silicon in its refined elemental state, therefore, was purely due to a manufacturing bottleneck, not any sort of a raw-materials scarcity. The output of silicon solar cells had gone way up, but the output of refined silicon had not, creating a shortage in the latter. Any resulting spike in prices was bound to be short-lived, however, as it would merely serve as an incentive to build more refineries and open more silica quarries. As indeed it was.
However, it’s also small potatoes as government fiascoes go. The Iraq War has wasted far, far more money. Not to mention lives (Solyndra killed nobody).
And no, it wasn’t a stupid investment because it was an alternative energy investment; it was a stupid investment because it contained a flawed premise about silicon.
Published at 10:09 on 15 September 2011
First, it bears pointing out that illegal immigration only became a big issue when Dubya’s popularity started flagging, as a result of the Iraq War going badly and the economy slipping into a slump, and that the professed concern about it was whipped up by the same crowd that advocated Dubya’s policies.
Second, it bears pointing out that about 90% of the rhetoric is about the illegal immigrants themselves (who have been rebranded simply “illegals;” presumably the extra word “immigrants” had too much danger of humanizing those the Right was trying to demonize). Only a tiny fraction is about the illegal employers who give them work, despite it being every bit as illegal to employ an illegal immigrant as it is to become one. (Why aren’t those employers being called “illegals,” too?) Remember that the next time one of the anti-immigrant crowd tries to claim they principally care about playing by the rules and obeying the law.
Finally, as Derrick Jensen has pointed out, this whole obsession with tightly regulating the human crossing of borders while ignoring all the harm from inanimate objects (i.e. finished goods, raw materials, and wastes) crossing borders shows just what a bunch of xenophobic hypocrites those who rant about “illegals” typically are. This is particularly the case when they add ecological pretenses to their ranting. Unless, that is, for some reason you find it reasonable to believe that it is mere coincidence that they only raise concerns that are inconvenient to those with the least power and privilege in society.
