Friday, April 5, 2013

Ten Good Things


Politics have been absent from this blog for about a month now. I really didn't want to talk about the lack of progress on so many fronts. I still don't. Instead, this post will lay out 10 good things that have happened in the past couple of months or so.

1. On April 2, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to approve "the first treaty on the global arms trade, which seeks to regulate the $70 billion business in conventional arms and keep weapons out of the hands of human rights abusers." [Reuters] There were 22 abstentions but only three nations voted "no" - Iran, Syria and North Korea. The massive and poorly regulated global trade in arms feeds conflicts like those in Mali, Syria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
 


2. On March 15, Maryland became the 18th state to abolish the death penalty since it was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976. The repeal was proposed by Governor O'Malley. The NAACP and the Catholic Church were among the groups that organized to end executions in the state. Nationwide, death sentences have declined by 75% and executions by 60% since the 1990s, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. [Mansfield News Journal]

3. On April 4, Gov. Malloy of Connecticut signed what many are calling the strongest and most comprehensive gun legislation in the nation. Connecticut joins New York and Colorado to become the 3rd state to pass tough gun control legislation in the wake of the Newton shootings.

4. On March 21, President Obama delivered a speech in Jerusalem to Israeli students. In addition to stating his support for Israel, he appealed to the students to consider the plight of the Palestinians and emphasized the need for a just peace and for a Palestinian state: "Put yourself in their shoes. Look at the world through their eyes. It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of their own. Living their entire lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements not just of those young people but their parents, their grandparents, every single day. It’s not just when settler violence against Palestinians goes unpunished. It’s not right to prevent Palestinians from farming their lands; or restricting a student’s ability to move around the West Bank; or displace Palestinian families from their homes. Neither occupation nor expulsion is the answer. Just as Israelis built a state in their homeland, Palestinians have a right to be a free people in their own land."  The students burst into applause 5 times during this brief portion of Obama's speech. 
 
 
5. On April 2, the Dow Jones industrial average hit two new records: an intraday high of about 14,684, and a record close at 14,662. Also, in spite of the "sequester", 88,000 jobs were added in the US in March and unemployment inched down to 7.6%.
 
6. Anything that increases our understanding of the universe is a good thing. In March after extensive data analysis, CERN scientists announced that they were increasingly certain that they had indeed discovered the elusive Higgs boson in July of 2012. The Higgs boson was the only particle in the Standard Model that had not yet been discovered. The Standard Model of Physics (aka the "Big Bang Theory") is the prevailing theory of the creation of our universe. About a week after that announcement, the European Space Agency Planck Mission fine-tuned the date of the Big Bang. It is now considered to have occurred about 13.82 billion years ago, making the universe about 100 million years older than the last estimate.
 
See also: The Left Bank Cafe Post of March 18  [Higgs boson] and Slate post of March 21 [age of the universe]
 
7. On March 13, the College of Cardinals elected Pope Francis. His humility (he asked that the two hundred thousand or so that had gathered at St. Peter's first pray for him before delivering the traditional blessing of a new Pope), his pastoral bent (his riding public transport in Argentina and his active concern for the poor), and his openness towards the role of women in the Church are good things. In his first Easter Sunday message, Pope Francis "passionately called for 'peace in all the world,' urging Israelis and Palestinians to 'resume negotiations to end a conflict that has lasted all too long,' calling for an end to the civil war in Syria, and promoting a 'renewed spirit of reconciliation' on the Korean Peninsula." [New York Times]
 
8. On March 22, as President Obama was leaving for home, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu voiced regret for the loss of life in the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, apologizing for any mistakes that led to the death of eight Turkish nationals and one American national. (For those of you who have forgotten, on May 31, 2010, Israeli commandoes boarded a flotilla of six Turkish ships trying to bypass the Israeli blockade and deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. Nine civilians were killed by the commandoes.)

9. Jim Wallis has authored a new book. I like Jim Wallis - he's one of the designated "Essential Links" for this website [look to the right of this post]Taking its title from Lincoln's quote, On God's Side is subtitled "What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn't Learned About Serving the Common Good". I haven't read it yet but Wallis wrote this during the 2012 election cycle - fed up, I imagine, by the incivility of the country's politicial debate. "A commitment to the common good could bring us together and solve the deepest problems this country and the world now face: How do we work together? How do we treat each other, especially the poorest and most vulnerable? How do we take care of not just ourselves but also one another?" [Time.com]
 
10. Finally, click on this link to a video of an act of kindness caught on tape. Sort of reaffirms your belief in the basic goodness of people.  The young man in this video and the students in Obama's Jerusalem audience are a couple of reasons to be hopeful for the future. 
 
 

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