Skip to main content

McCain's plans

Image
By
Click on the entry link to get an article by Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek. The nation is abuzz about what Barack Obama's former minister is saying, and ignoring what one of the actual candidates is saying.

I think Zakaria is right: McCain's stand on international relations is bizarre, schizophrenic and will lead to further escalation of world tensions.

I file this under "politics -- the unexplained." Why isn't anyone talking about where this proposed policy would lead us?

Another unanswered question for me: Guantanamo Bay is in Cuba. How did it happen that the United States of America has a prison camp in a country with which we have no diplomatic relations? How did we do that, exactly? Make a phone call to Fidel and ask if we could rent some vacant gulag? Surely we didn't just violate another nation's sovereignty and blast onto the beach and set up a prison?

What connects these two ideas: Do we have a coherent international relations policy that is transparent, sensible, and ethical? Answer: we do not. And under McCain, that would appear unlikely to change.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Uncle Bobby's Wedding

By
Recently, a library patron challenged (urged a reconsideration of the ownership or placement of) a book called "Uncle Bobby's Wedding." Honestly, I hadn't even heard of it until that complaint. But I did read the book, and responded to the patron, who challenged the item through email and requested that I respond online (not via snail-mail) about her concerns. I suspect the book will get a lot of challenges in 2008-2009. So I offer my response, purging the patron's name, for other librarians. Uncle Bobby's wedding June 27, 2008 Dear Ms. Patron: Thank you for working with my assistant to allow me to fit your concerns about “Uncle Bobby's Wedding,” by Sarah S. Brannen, into our “reconsideration” process. I have been assured that you have received and viewed our relevant policies: the Library Bill of Rights, the Freedom to Read, Free Access to Libraries for Minors, the Freedom to View, and our Reconsideration Policy. The intent of providing all tha...
456 comments
Read more

Installing Linux on a 2011 Macbook Pro

By
I had two MacBook Pros, both 13" models from late 2011. One had 4 gigs of RAM, and the other 8. Both of them were intolerably slow. In the first case, I wound up installing CleanMyMac , which did arcane things to various files, and put up alerts to warn me about disappearing memory. But it made the machine useable again, albeit not exactly speedy. I changed some habits: Safari as browser rather than Firefox or Chrome. I tried to keep tabs down to four or five. The second Mac had bigger problems. Its charger was shot, but even with that replaced, the battery tapped out at 75%. More importantly, the whole disk had been wiped, which meant that it wouldn't boot. Recently, I had downloaded a couple of Linux distributions ("distros") on USB drives. Elementary OS 5.1 (Hera) was reputed to be a lightweight, beautiful distro that shared some aesthetics with the Mac OS. So I thought I'd give it a try. Ahead of time, I tried to read up on how difficult it might be to...
6 comments
Read more

The First Year: 5 strategies for success

By
[The First Year: 5 Strategies for Success, 1 of 8] Over the past several years, I've had the pleasure of coaching several new public library directors. For a  variety of reasons, many directors are stepping into the role for the first time. Often, particularly in smaller or more rural libraries, they haven't even had a lot of supervisory experience. I tell new directors that the two big advantages of confidential access to someone who has walked in your shoes is that (a) you can ask the questions you might feel embarrassed to ask your board or staff, and (b) you have the advantage of someone else's mistakes. To be clear, everybody makes mistakes. It may be the most powerful learning tool we have. But I've thought about my mistakes, and I can help you identify the old ones, and with luck, make new ones. There's no good reason to make the same ones! I believe that there are five key constituencies the public library director must satisfy:  your boss  (usual...
1 comment
Read more