Current Events and Various Links

A lot has been happening in the world recently. Many of these events are worthy of their own lengthy commentary, but for now I'll just do a brief rundown, together with a few relevant links.

In Taiwan, the government recently signed a highly problematic service trade agreement with China that looks like a major threat to Taiwan in many areas (here's just one example). Incidentally, here's an editorial from a local paper that makes many of the same points I often make about the absurdity of the label "Chinese" as used by the Chinese government and its supporters.

In Iran, the recent presidential election is grounds for cautious optimism, as the most moderate candidate won overwhelmingly. He is no liberal and in any case his power is highly restricted in Iran's theocratic state, but he has expressed a willingness to improve relations with the West, so perhaps we will see some improvement. In any case, the mere fact that he won indicates that the Iranian people want to see their country take a less conservative direction.

In the US, the Supreme Court followed one terrible decision overturning part of the Civil Rights Act with one good one overturning the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (Anti-Marriage Act would be more like it), at least with respect to federal recognition of same sex marriage and also leaving a ruling overturning California's anti-gay-marriage Proposition 8 standing.

Going slightly further back, there was the revelation about the wide scope of the US government's collection of information including phone records and data from the big Internet businesses, as well as the saga of Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor who leaked the existence of these programs. I haven't completely decided where I come down on the spying itself, given that much of the data the government has been collecting is already in the hands of a lot of people, but the justifications given by various government officials for universal collection of such data have been rather weak. As for Snowden, while his leaking of the existence of these programs was technically illegal, I don't think it was wrong ethically or morally speaking, since I think people deserve to know that the government is doing such things. On the other hand, he is said to be carrying quite a bit of other classified information, and by choosing places like Hong Kong and Moscow to seek refuge in he may have given Chinese and Russian intelligence operatives an opportunity to obtain it. This I do have a problem with, since despite the revelations about the things the US government has been doing, it is clear to anyone who is the least bit objective that China and Russia are both a lot worse when it comes to suppressing dissent. Opposition to the US government's actions shouldn't blind Snowden or anyone else to the even more more undemocratic and repressive actions of other governments to the point of doing anything to help the latter. Incidentally, for a country that is more worthy of admiration than any of the above, see here.

Finally, US President Barack Obama finally announced a plan to fight climate change. Yes, he should have done it years ago, and it doesn't include the truly bold but necessary step of creating a carbon tax. But the latter would require the cooperation of Congress, something he won't get with the current one, and as for the former point, well, better late than never. Unless, of course, it's already too late, as some might argue. For an infographic on what is really happening and why action is needed, see here. I certainly hope that Obama is able to put all of his plan into effect, and that it turns out to be only the beginning of a concentrated effort to do something about climate change. Because if the US and other countries don't start taking the problem seriously soon, then humanity might have to hope technologies like this become reality soon.