Barry Steinman's Blog

It was amazing to watch the coverage of the demonstrations and violence in Iran following the disputed elections. If it wasn’t for Twitter and the Internet, we never would have seen what was happening. The government effectively stopped the reporting of the major international news organizations. They had to rely on Twitter and Youtube feeds from actual demonstrators.

It is evident that the digital revolution is making it difficult for despotic regimes to control what their citizens say and read. It is interesting that Iran tried to limit or slow down the internet during those riots, but they soon discovered that they needed the internet as well for the government to function.

Ironically, this same medium of freedom has been used in China to crack down on people. Yahoo gave the Chinese government access to a private citizens email account. The citizen was later arrested. Yahoo and Google are faced with either giving in to Chinese censorship and spying demands or walking away from the largest and fastest growing internet market in the world.

With the digital revolution lead to more freedom or more censorship? Only time will tell.

sober up washington

I stumbled on what might be a constructive proposal for how to reform our broken political system and address the overbearing influence big money has in influencing our federal government. It is an op-ed that appears to be written two Harvard Law professors, one a conservative and one a liberal. You can read the article here.
They want to see a constitutional convention called by the states.

Some of the reasons given
Enact true campaign finance reform... because Congress does not have the will to do it, since they are too controlled by special interests.
Give the president a line item veto.

It makes for an interesting read.
I am tempted to support the idea...

I'd love to hear some insights and thoughts from others....

Monetary Reform

I am reading a very interesting website. Monetary.Org
It advocates reforming our monetary system.
The reasons being the high unemployment and the squeeze of the middle class.
They are proposing having congress take back from the Federal Reserve the power to control the monetary system.They also propose to change the monetary system so it is not based on debt.

I'd really be interested in hearing other's perspectives on these proposals.

Prohibition

PBS has been showing the Ken Burns documentary on prohibition.
http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/

The evangelist Billy Sunday envisioned the following as the results
of prohibition:

"No one marked the day (start of Prohibition) as fervently as evangelist Billy Sunday, who conducted a revival meeting in Norfolk, Virginia. Ten thousand grateful people jammed Sunday’s enormous tabernacle to hear him announce the death of liquor and reveal the advent of an earthly paradise. “The reign of tears is over,” Sunday proclaimed. “The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile, and children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent.”

He was so... wrong.

Righteousness cannot be legislated.
Instead of righteousness,
outlawing liquor dramatically increased lawlessness and murder.

It makes one wonder if we are following the same failed approach
in the war on drugs.

Barry

The 10 year anniversary of 911 brings back alot of memories and emotions.
Just like the massive power outage in SOCAL yesterday, it brought us out into our front yards to talk to our neighbors.

One question that arises is the scriptures that tell us to love our enemies. How does this apply to 911?
Honestly I don't know.
I did not personally lose anyone on 911, so I don't think I am really in a place to comment on this emotionally. Because of that I could easily become philosophical and talk about the necessity to love our enemies. However, if I personally lost someone in 911, I think I would find it a lot more difficult to talk about loving my enemies.

Trying to image bringing this concept to some more reality in my life...
What if someone broke into my house and started to attack my wife and children?
Would I sit idly by an do nothing.
I think I would do everything in my power to stop them.
After such an experience I would also do everything in my power to prevent such an occurrence from happening again. I would hope the police would find the guilty party and put them behind bars where they could not harm anyone else.

I do think I could forgive the person. But I don't think forgiving and loving the guilty party changes the fact that they need to pay for their crime.

I think our war against Al Quaeda is a similar situation. We are trying to prevent future attacks against our country.

So I have no firm answers here...
but only questions.