US Current Affairs

Arizona Joins ‘The List’

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

I have a partly tongue-in-cheek list of US states that I am currently ‘boycotting’, or have no intention of visiting in the immediate future, either because of unfortunate things that have happened to me there, or most usually because of particularly stupid and offensive laws that have been either proposed or actually voted on and passed in their legislatures.

Arizona was already strongly competing to join this exclusive list (it is difficult to join and even harder to be removed from the list) with the signing by Gov. Jan Brewer of their famous anti-illegal-immigration law, allowing state police to detain anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant (quite how you tell such a person from a natural US citizen by their appearance or behaviour is anyone’s guess, but I think we all know the criteria they have in mind):

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/us/politics/24immig.html?_r=1

But then came this gem that I was alerted to by a friend on Facebook – now, the Arizona State Senate Judiciary Committee (a pompous title for a pompous group of individuals) has endorsed a controversial bill that will, if passed, allow Arizona employees to exclude contraception coverage from the healthcare plans that they offer to their employees, if their religious beliefs or moral convictions encourage them to do so. Furthermore, the bill would also allow employers to demand proof of a medical prescription (for non birth-control related reasons) if an employee wishes to claim for contraceptive pills on their health insurance policy.

http://www.statepress.com/2012/03/12/senate-judiciary-committee-endorses-controversial-contraceptive-bill/

Let me count the ways that this is an offensive and idiotic proposal.

The author of the bill – one Debbie Lesko, Republican of course – says that:

“So, government should not be telling the organizations or mom and pop employers to do something against their moral beliefs.”

Okay, well guess what. Maybe I’ll set up shop in Arizona and start a small business. But I am from a small and little-known religion that doesn’t believe in mammograms or cervical cancer screening. I don’t know why, my particular interpretation of my hypothetical holy book just tells me that to test for these diseases to allow early intervention would be an affront to God. So none of my female employees will get to benefit from these forms of healthcare as part of the insurance plan that I provide them. Oh, and my new religion also thinks that heart disease and erectile dysfunction are punishments from God that should be meekly accepted rather than treated, so no Viagra or anti-cholesterol medication for the gents. If you need Viagra to treat some other ailment not connected with erectile dysfunction we can maybe talk about coming to an agreement, but I’ll need a signed letter from your doctor explaining your precise medical history and needs.

Can you imagine the uproar?

Let us be quite clear. This is not about freedom of religion. Many states have been living under an expressed requirement that employers include birth control coverage in their healthcare plans for many years with nary a whisper of complaint until a Democrat named Barack Obama occupied the oval office. This is about slowly trying to establish a fundamentalist Christian theocracy in America, one in which even the overwhelming majority of Christians, myself included, would not wish to live in were it fully implemented. Republicans – who once criticised Obama because of the type of Christian church that he attended and the pastor who preached there – have decided that it would now be more politically fruitful to fan the embers of suspicion that he is in fact a muslim, and that he is launching an all-out assault on “Judeo-Christian” principles.

And while we’re on the topic, can someone please initiate a sensible conversation about moving away from the current employer-based health insurance system in America? Aside from the damage it does to the economy in terms of issues such as impeding mobility of labour (especially important during the current fragile recovery with unemployment so high), if individuals purchased their own health insurance rather than relying on the employer to do it for them, we could sidestep this whole argument about coercing employers to act against their moral beliefs. If Debbie Lesko ever chose to leave her political career and return to the private sector, she wouldn’t have to stay up all night worrying about what naughty things her employees might be doing with the healthcare coverage that she paid for, because the employees would be paying the premiums and taking their chances that they won’t be struck down by lightning for daring to use a condom, or the pill. And I think everyone would sleep better at night as a result.

Arizona, you have been teetering on the brink for a long time now. But congratulations,  you have officially made the list.

Growing Up In The Age Of Facebook

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Facebook Password

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There’s an interesting piece in The Daily Telegraph today about a 12-year-old girl from Minnesota who is taking her school to court because she was forced by the school authorities, against her will and without the expressed permission of her parents, to divulge her Facebook password and allow school officials to read her private messages.

I read this article and my first thoughts were – thank God for the Americal Civil Liberties Union, who are bringing the case on her behalf. Much maligned by the American right wing because they defend those rights that conservatives would actually quite happily squash (flag burning, mosque building, same-sex marriage) while they hypocritically parade around acting like the last stalwart defenders of freedom, you can usually rely on the ACLU to defend the cause of liberty, even if it means holding up a mirror to society and making us ask ourselves some difficult questions sometimes.

The article goes on to mention some additional egregious instances of personal privacy violations by schools and employers, including the following:

“The ACLU recently forced the Department of Corrections in Maryland to stop requiring applicants to provide their Facebook passwords when applying for jobs.”

As if such a practice should ever have been attempted in the so-called land of the free! And:

“In an recent investigation, the TV station MSNBC found that many university sports departments now require students to “friend” their coach, giving officials access to their “friends-only” posts. The University of North Carolina handbook reads: “Each team must identify at least one coach or administrator who is responsible for having access to and regularly monitoring the content of team members’ social networking sites and postings.”

Such actions are a total affront to privacy, and organisations that deal in such underhanded and coercive tactics deserve to be named, shamed and sued. Though many of us now live a substantial portion of our lives online in terms of our Facebook and Twitter accounts etc., this only makes the need to enforce a boundary between one’s personal and work lives even more important. There are many ways that a person can bring their family, church, school or employer into disrepute, but just as your boss cannot invite himself round for dinner to make sure you aren’t complaining to your family and neighbours about work at the end of the day, neither can your employer eavesdrop on the digital footprints you leave on social media. No ifs, no buts – it’s wrong.

But moving beyond this issue, we must recognise that growing up and going through school today is surely more different for today’s generation of schoolchildren than most people can ever appreciate. Facebook and Twitter, and the fact that everyone has a mobile phone from about the age of seven these days certainly makes socialising more fun and exciting, but can also take the damage that is caused by “run of the mill” bullying and increase it exponentially. Sadly there are already cases of teenage suicides precipitated by social media-related bullying, and the problem has attracted enough attention that Facebook and other social networks have had to take steps to make it easier to report such behaviour. Faced with this new threat to the wellbeing of young people you can therefore understand the school’s alarm, and perhaps understand (if not accept) the action that they took in this instance. However, I truly would have expected a story about the forced divulgence of personal passwords and the snooping by authorities on a school pupil’s online identity to have originated from Britain, and not the United States.

And it should not have to fall to the ACLU to argue the blindingly obvious in court – that schools, employers and other such authorities have no remit to spy on a private citizen’s online life.

A Disservice To Our Military

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

British Prime Minister David Cameron (C)

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The Daily Telegraph’s Con Coughlin writes today about the terrible incident in Afghanistan where a US soldier went on the rampage in an Afghan village, killing sixteen civilians, including a number of children.

I read the piece with interest, but the author makes a couple of throwaway comments that I found quite disrespectful. At one point Coughlin writes:

“We all know that soldiers, without the proper training and discipline, can easily degenerate into a murderous rabble that terrorises the local population. We have seen this happen hundreds of times in Africa where armies are no different from the militias who rape, murder and loot at will.”

This is unnecessarily harsh language to use with respect to the armed forces. Are there countless cases where this has happened in various conflicts around the world, yes. But to suggest that the only thing separating the British or American armies from being a ruthless militia with no morals is essentially a PowerPoint presentation on coping under stress is rather glib. He then follows this up with the following:

“After six British soldiers were murdered last week in southern Afghanistan when they were blown up by one of the Taliban’s roadside bombs, it is easy to imagine the murderous thoughts of revenge their fellow soldiers are today feeling towards the Taliban. But the reason they don’t pick up their guns and walk into the neighbouring village and massacre every Afghan they can find is the strict training they receive before they are deployed.”

Excuse me? I’m sure that the fellow soldiers mentioned here are full of many feelings of sadness and anger following the deaths of their colleagues, but I would submit to Con Coughlin that as well as the fact that they received strict training before they were deployed, another reason that they don’t “pick up their guns and walk into the neighbouring village and massacre every Afghan they can find” is because they are decent human beings with the intelligence to understand not only that the general civilian population was not responsible for the deaths of their comrades, but that to do so would make them no better than the forces that they are fighting. To say otherwise, and to suggest that there is little to separate the vast majority of soldiers who are decent and brave individuals from the deranged Staff Sergeant who perpetrated this massacre is not only wrong, but frankly offensive too.

I also don’t think I am imagining things when I detect undertones of class-based superiority from the author, that maybe he views the British soldiers as slightly dim and uneducated, less capable of reason than the average, middle-class Telegraph reader, and therefore in need of this strict training to ensure that their baser, more violent instincts do not come to the fore under stressful circumstances.

It amazes me to observe the difference in tone in terms of how the armed forces are talked about in Britain compared to the United States. Such an article would never have been written by a commentator in the United States, where even President Obama’s apology to the Afghan people for the accidental burning of the Koran by US forces was met with strong criticism, so above reproach is the US military to some on the right.

Honestly, I don’t believe that either country has it quite right. In the United States, I admire how serving soldiers and veterans are acknowledged and given respect in public places such as airports (where they are allowed to stay in USO club lounges while they wait to board their flights) and sports games, where they are frequently applauded before the game. However, sometimes I feel that the almost-worship of the armed forces goes too far, with all returning soldiers being labelled “heroes” whether or not they have seen active combat.

In Britain, on the other hand, I don’t think that we do nearly enough to acknowledge the contribution that our military servicemen and women make for our country, projecting our nation’s force to implement our foreign policy objectives. Hence we see serving soliders being refused permission to stay at an hotel because of an unbelievable “no military” policy, and London’s most sacred war memorial being desecrated by the spoiled, self-entitled son of a rock musician.

But while both of our countries may have some way to go in terms of striking the correct balance in terms of how we view, treat and discuss these topics, I would hope we can all agree that there is a lot more preventing the good men and women of our nations armed forces from becoming mass murdering militias than the training that they receive, important though that may be.

On Drive-Thru ATMs And Stale Tortillas

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

Drive Thru ATM

 

I read an interesting piece by Peter Foster in today’s Daily Telegraph, titled “The quaintness of America, the backwards superpower”.

The basic gist of the article (written, it should be acknowledged, by a self-confessed admirer of the US) is that while America remains the world’s preeminent economic and military power, in some areas it lags behind the rest of the “modernised” world. He goes on to give several examples of this backwardness, citing the prevalence banking cheques as a payment method, the widespread existence of ATM fees, the use of imperial measurement units, the state of the roads, and – perhaps most shockingly of all – the continued use of corks rather than screwcaps by the American wine industry.

Now perhaps we can forgive Peter Foster his perspective based on the fact that his biography states that he is “the Telegraph’s US Editor based in Washington DC. He moved to America in January 2012 after three years based in Beijing…”

I have also spent time in Beijing, and would certainly agree that if you stick to the glitzy, brand-new parts of the city (as you would likely do when covering “the rise of China”) and you are able to successfully block out the people riding rickshaws along the side of the motorways, then yes, parts of America are likely to lose some of their gleam by comparison. However, the litany of complaints about America, and the fact that the US is singled out, makes me wonder when was the last time the author spent any time in his home country.

In America, if you want to do some banking in a hurry, you can go through the drive-through ATM in almost any town. No parking on double yellow lines, sprinting to the ATM in the rain and hoping that your car hasn’t been towed by the time you withdraw your cash, as is the case in Britain.

In America, there are more drive-through restaurants, pharmacies, (rather dubiously) liquor stores, drive-by trash cans and any number of other modern conveniences that mean you don’t have to leave your car to conduct normal business. You can probably argue about whether this is a good or a bad thing, but the Americans certainly have one over on us in this sphere.

And when the time comes to refuel your car, the chances are that you can pay at the pump in America. Remember that handy invention? I think they tried to introduce it in Britain in a few places, and then the machines broke, were never fixed, and have been covered over with signs, poorly written in felt tip pen, telling you to pay inside and join the long line of other people in the convenience store. Truly the way of the future.

There is a picture at the top of the article showing Buzz Aldrin saluting the US flag on the surface of the moon, with the caption “Sure, they can do this, but they can’t work out how to pay for stuff with a debit card”. Seriously? Mr. Foster, are we even from the same country? I can’t count the number of times I have gone to a fast food restaurant, or the cinema, or any number of other places in Britain only to be told “the credit card machine is broken, cash only, sorry” by some dead-eyed employee. Again, there is usually also a badly-written sign informing me of the same fact, carefully tucked away where it is almost impossible to see when placing your order. In America, I can wave my McDonald’s card at the little sensor at the drive-through window and it automatically debits my bank account. Nice.

And let’s look at consumer goods and food. If I buy a loaf of bread from the supermarket in Britain, it is sealed with a little sticky strip of plastic which loses its adhesive qualities after about two uses, after which time you either have to try tying the plastic bag and squashing the bread in the process, or leaving it to go stale. In America, the same loaf of bread comes with a little trusty wire device that keeps on working until long after the bread has been consumed. If I buy a pack of tortillas in Britain – well, first of all, they will look and taste terrible, because decent Mexican food cannot be had in this country for love or money. But secondly, the tortillas will be kept in a sealed plastic vacuum pack, which, once punctured with a knife to access the tortillas, cannot be resealed. The result, once again, is stale tortillas. In America, the same tortillas actually taste good, and come in a ziplog bag so that you can reseal them.

Stale tortillas, British-style. Yum.

 

I opened this pack two days ago, and I could use the remaining tortillas inside as an effective lethal weapon in a pinch. And yes, I could have bought my own zip-lock bag to preserve them, but the point is that I shouldn’t have to!

Oh, and say you want to buy your loaf of bread and your tortillas and it happens to be after 6pm on a Sunday. Good luck finding somewhere that is open in Britain. Sunday trading laws, sorry. In America, I would just nip to Target. Or Wal-Mart. Or one of the many other stores where they have correctly interpreted the phrase “Open 24 Hours” to mean “we don’t leave our stations at 5pm on a Sunday and go home to watch TV, and if you haven’t had the chance to do your grocery shopping yet, well that’s just tough luck”.

Mr. Foster also takes exception to American cable TV, finding the online channel guides to be very confusing compared to “the standard Sky TV menus that most English readers will be familiar with”. Well, shock horror, a country of 300+ million people has lots of regional and national cable/satellite TV providers, rather than the Sky/Virgin duopoly that exists in Britain. Yes, in America the providers may go to war with the content providers sometimes, meaning that you lose your favourite channel from the airwaves for a couple of months while they stare each other down, which is hardly ideal. But at least the American consumers have choice. We still think that’s a good thing in Britain even if we don’t practice it ourselves, right?

I could go on. At one point I thought about starting a blog that focused exclusively on the many ways in which British consumers are shortchanged and under-served compared to their American counterparts. The point is that it works both ways. Britain and America both come across as rather tired and shabby if you have spent a lot of time in the glitzy new developments of Beijing and Shanghai. But I don’t know many people who would willingly up sticks and leave to go there, for all the tea and Mag-Lev trains in China.

And in conclusion – well, I don’t actually have time to write a conclusion. It’s 4pm on a Sunday afternoon and I haven’t done my grocery shopping yet, giving me 45 minutes to run into town, throw some badly-packaged food into my shopping cart and get in line at the checkout.