Beauty and The Beads

Noonan: Untouchables of society caused economic problems

Saturday, March 31, 2012 – 01:10 PM

Finance Minister Michael Noonan has said that Ireland has to get away from the system of untouchables in society who were allowed do what they liked.

Michael Noonan made the comments at the Fine Gael Ard Fheis, where he promised that budget after budget of this Government will be fair.

He says the most vulnerable – the elderly and children – will be protected while those who can afford to pay will do so.

Speaking at the event in Dublins Convention Centre today attended by up to 4,000 party delegates,
Minister Noonan said the situation of a few in society benefitting at the expense of the many will not be allowed again.

We have emerged from a previous administration where it was demonstrably unfair, and you had untouchables in society who were allowed, more or less, do what they liked to enrich themselves.

We have to get away from that – that was the cause of the problems.

He said global societies who deal best with their problems are those that treat all of the children of the nation equally.

The Finance Minister also said his next budget will force those who earn more money to pay the most.

The burden will have to fall evenly on people, he said.

Those that are strongest will have to contribute most and those that are weakest in society will have to be protected.

Earlier Jobs Minister Richard Bruton said that the challenge facing the country is to create an economy built on enterprise, and not speculation.

Minister Bruton said people need to know that difficult times remain – but that a better economy is possible.

“Yes, we are on a difficult road; we are facing a daunting task; there will be setbacks – but we can travel with confidence, the Minister said.

“We have the capability to deliver a transformed economy that will create employment opportunities for our young people.

“We can put to an end the period that we have just been through, when so many young people have lost their jobs and so many have had no choice but to go abroad.

PATSY McGARRY

HOLIDAY MESSAGE:A SOCIETY scarred by great divisions of power and wealth is not a society in which the human spirit can flourish, President Michael D Higgins has said in a St Patricks Day speech.

Where there are those who believe that inequality is inevitable, or even beneficial, there is now concrete evidence to the contrary, he said at a reception in ras an Uachtarin.

Almost everything from life expectancy, to levels of mental illness, illiteracy and violence in the community is affected not by how wealthy a society is, but how equal it is, he said.

A more equal society is a healthier society judged by almost every indicator. Another great moral and intellectual challenge lies in the inclination towards cynicism, fatalism, and lack of imagination that has been one of the sad legacies of our economic boom and subsequent downturn, the President added.

We needed to recall and cherish that which makes us truly human: our consciousness, our capacity to question, to critique and shape the world in which we live and raise future generations.

We needed to rebuild a sense of trust and community so that we can build a new economy predicated on a shared common good, rather than . . . for individual aggrandisement, he said.

Referring to an Irish Times poll published on Saturday, which found that a majority of emigrants who were surveyed had left voluntarily, he told the Marian Finucane Show: There are many people who have gone abroad and come back, including myself. People will come and go. What was important, he said, was that we keep our connection with the Irish family wherever they may be.

One of the things that inspired Tim McGrath to pen a biography about naval
hero John Barry was a statue of the Father of the American Navy housed in
Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

The statue is identified only by his last name, Barry.

Stand by that statue for just a minute and watch the tourists approach,
McGrath said. The cameras come out. The family poses and, invariably, one
of them asks, lsquo;Who was Barry?

McGrath, author of John Barry: An American Hero in the Age of Sail,
closed out the 2011-2012 season of the Palm Beach Prologue Society Tuesday,
speaking at a luncheon held at Northern Trust Bank.

The Irish-born Barry arrived in Philadelphia during the decade before the
American Revolution and rose up through the ranks commanding ships during
the War for Independence. As captain of the Lexington, Raleigh and Alliance,
Barry faced down three mutinies during his career. He captured the first
enemy warship taken by a Continental vessel and fought the last battle of
the American Revolution.

Nicholas Pollard, Prologue Society chairman and senior vice president at
Northern Trust, introduced McGrath.

(He will) help us understand why a disenfranchised Irish-Catholic sailor
would ever go against the motherland and fight for the Continental Navy,
Pollard said.

McGrath described Barry as physically imposing at 6 feet 4 inches and
ambitious with a strong and active mind. He never lost his Irish brogue
and, with only a limited education, he became proficient as a phonetic
speller, McGrath said.

Barry came to America around 1760, joining a large population of Irish
immigrants in Philadelphia. By 21, Barry was given his first command.

He may not have been a born leader, but mastered the art of leadership,
McGrath said. American sailors followed his orders willingly.

Among his many accomplishments, Barry mentored the next generation of naval
heroes, McGrath said.

The glue that held his wits, ambition, judgment and leadership together was
his courage, McGrath said. He was an adventurer and a realist.

Though he was born in Ireland, Barry was first and foremost an American,
McGrath said.

He best summed up his love of city and country in one sentence, McGrath
said. There is everything the heart can ask for here.

Rita Zimmerman, who attended the luncheon, said, The most interesting part of
the talk was how Barry circulated in the perilous world of America in those
days … how he was cunning and how he formed relationships. This tradition
of the sea started the American brand of commerce. I love American history
because its probably the richest history in the world.

The Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana/ BUSAC Advocacy Project has launched a 67 page report aimed at mainstreaming pharmaceutical practice for a national comprehensive health care delivery system.

The report focused mainly on a study of the challenges facing Community Pharmacy Practice (CPP) in Ghana under the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

The report covered the Greater Accra Region, which represented the southern sector, Ashanti Region, for the middle sector and Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions, representing the northern sector.

The respondents were selected NHIS clients and accredited community pharmacies. In all, 2,400 clients and 170 providers were interviewed in the three sectors using a list obtained from the National Health Insurance Authority.

The document covers the NHIS, problems facing the CPP, delays in provider claims reimbursement, decreasing prescription turn-over, the proposed capitation system, relevance of the problems and justification of an advocacy action and data analysis.

The survey was undertaken in 2011, seven years after the introduction of the NHIS.

Clients sampled included persons who are 15 years and above and had registered with the NHIS at the time of the study.

The document assessed the veracity of the problems associated with the NHIS and how they affect accredited community pharmacies in meeting the pharmaceutical care needs of clients.

It determined the effect of the delays in claims reimbursement on NHIS accredited pharmacies and clients, explored clients ‘preferences for separating prescribing and dispensing functions as a means to improve quality of care under the NHIA.

It touched on the proposed capitation by the NHIA and how it would affect community pharmacy practice in Ghana.

The study assessed the impact of the NHIS on the performance of National Health Insurance (NHI) accredited Community Pharmacies in meeting the pharmaceutical care needs of insured patients and the sustainability of Community Pharmacy Practice.

The data collection tool was designed to elicit information such as; how long it took for claims reimbursement, prescription turnover prior for one to be accredited, NHIS and non-NHIS prescription turnover after accreditation.

It also examined measures put in place to overcome challenges imposed by the scheme and how it affects service to clients registered with the scheme and future outlook of practice.

The study recommended that although the level of awareness of the NHIS was high, there was the need for the NHIA to engage in some education about the scheme.

It touched on the right of patients to exercise an option of being served at a NHI facility or going to an accredited community pharmacy to be served.

This will help provide a level playing field for the public and private sector participation in the pharmaceutical care service delivery in Ghana.

The report said the NHIA should develop innovative ways of reimbursing accredited Service Providers and this should involve: “designing an on-line submission of claims so as to reduce claim reimbursement time and therefore prevent capital lock up and consequent increasing cost of capital to the private Pharmaceutical Service Providers”.

“The NHIA in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service as well as the Teaching Hospitals should engage stakeholders including accredited community pharmacies even as the programme of capitation is being piloted in the Ashanti Region. Such an engagement will discuss any implementation-related challenges of capitation as a health care financing option in Ghana and take on board the concerns of accredited community pharmacies.”

The report concluded that the practice of NHI facilities prescribing and dispensing at the same facility is not in tune with international best practice.

It said though the practice appears to be a likeable option in terms of convenience to patients, there were obvious disadvantages, which should be mainstreamed in order not pose a serious challenge to the delivery of quality pharmaceutical care in Ghana.**

The DJ stationed in front of the room cranked out traditional Persian pieces in between Lady Gaga and Rihanna.

The first dancer walked onto the dance floor and raised her arms gracefully above her head and danced with nimble footwork. Soon other guests followed suit.

Children pounced around.

Friends and families greeted each other.

Old men in suits and tie-clad students shared the dance floor.

Friends dragged other friends out to dance.

Almost 300 people stopped by the Hall of Flags in Houston Hall on March 15 to celebrate the beginning of spring. Often referred to as the Persian New Year, Nowruz is celebrated by millions of people worldwide. The Iranian calendar begins with the vernal equinox and Nowruz is an all-secular celebration commemorating the new year.

The Penn Persian Society restarted two years ago at Penn and brought this traditional celebration back to campus. The event attracted students from Penn, Drexel, Temple and the University of Buffalo and some families in the community.

“The diversity of people who are celebrating Nowruz with us is important to me,” PPS board member and College sophomore Bahar Javdan said. A significant number of guests were non-Persians. “It is a great opportunity for us to share our culture and part of what’s great about Penn.”

She pointed to the Haft-Sin table set up in the corner, and explained that each of the seven items on the table represented a larger concept, like the sky, the earth or animals.

“It’s one big party,” said College sophomore Kristin Mullen, who celebrated Nowruz because a few of her friends were on the PPS board. “People here are friendly and more serious about the dancing,” she said, looking at the packed dance floor, “and I am definitely excited to try the different foods.”

Wharton senior Sasan Choobineh and College freshman Cameron Kiani — co-presidents of Penn Persian Society — planned the celebration together with six other board members. The event was free of charge for all attendees.

“People oftentimes don’t know what being Persian means. There are Jewish Persians, Muslim Persians, Christian Persians,” Choobineh said.

“Many people glean a negative impression about Iran from what is in the media and broadcasted on TV,” Kiani said. “Ahmadinejad is a talking head who represents us in people’s minds sometimes. But just as George Bush or Barack Obama doesn’t represent all Americans, Ahmedinajad shouldn’t represent us,”

“I’m happy with the turnout and hope people glean from this event what real Iranians are like,” he added. “In the end, this holiday is a celebration of love for family, friends, delicious food and camaraderie.”

This article has been updated from a prior version to clarify Sasan Choobinehs quote.

Hassan – its not his real name – had a heavy metal band with two other twentysomethings. The raucous music represented rebellion, and in Iraq there was plenty to rebel against: occupation, poverty, patriarchal families – ample impetus to anger. The band made an album, but nobody would touch it; their songs and their look, people said, were satanic. Hassan uploaded a video to YouTube, and included the band members names. Five days ago, the other two musicians were killed on the street. Hassan is in hiding; hes almost too terrified to speak. Why are they doing this to us? he asked me. Why?

A new killing campaign is convulsing Iraq. The express targets are emos, short for emotional: a western-derived identity, teenagers adopting a pose of vulnerability, along with tight clothes and skewed hairdos and body piercing. Starting last year, mosques and the media both began raising the alarm about youthful immorality, calling the emos deviants and devil worshippers. In early February, somebody began killing people. The net was wide, definitions inexact. Men who seemed effeminate, girls with tattoos or peculiar jewellery, boys with long hair, could all be swept up. The killers like to smash their victims heads with concrete blocks.

There is no way to tell how many have died: estimates range from a few dozen to more than 100. Nor is it clear who is responsible. Many of the killings happened in east Baghdad, stronghold of Shia militias such as Moqtada al-Sadrs Mahdi army and Asaib Ahl al-Haq (the League of the Righteous). Neither, though, has claimed responsibility. Iraqs brutal interior ministry issued two statements in February. The first announced official approval to eliminate the satanists. The second, on 29 February, proclaimed a campaign to start with a crackdown on stores selling emo fashion. The loaded language suggests, at a minimum, that the ministry incited violence. Its highly possible that some police, in a force riddled with militia members, participated in the murders.

Its logical to compare this to the militia campaign against homosexual conduct in 2009, which I documented for Human Rights Watch. Hundreds of men lost their lives then. Gay-identified men have been caught up in these killings as well, and Baghdads LGBT community is rife with fear. Yet there are differences. The current killings target women as well as men, and children are the preferred victims. Its not quite true to say, as some press reports have suggested, that emo is just a synonym for gay in Iraq. Rather, immorality, western influence, decadence and blasphemy have come together in a loosely defined, poorly aligned complex of associations: and emo fashion and sexual perversion are part of the mix. Nobody cares much about disentangling the concepts, least of all the killers. All that matters is that all those things are bad.

Slaughtering children is monstrous. Yet the underlying paranoia is grimly familiar. Forty years ago, the sociologist Stanley Cohen developed the concept of moral panics: moments when social change grows so intense that it can no longer be addressed, or even described, in debate or through the political process. Instead, anxieties erupt in collective scapegoating. The public singles out folk devils to incarnate unwanted tendencies, and take the blame. His case study was the hysteria around mods and rockers, 60s youth subcultures. But there have been plenty of examples before and since in the developed west: panics over drug use (think kids cut loose with spending money), or child abuse in day care centres (think mothers moving into the workplace and leaving infants behind), or women in hijab (think a newly multicultural Europe and its discontents). The list goes on.

Youth deviance, though, is a leitmotif of many panics. Kids dont just symbolise social change; they are it, embodying the unmanageable future. Visions of their out-of-control escapades sum up transformations in communities and economies that are too strong to resist, too rapid to comprehend. Emo, moreover, adds an extra twist: gender. Its all about boys showing vulnerability in unmanly ways, girls flashing an unfeminine and edgy attitude.

In fact, moral panics over emos, gender and culture have multiplied in recent years. Russia debated a law banning emo dress in 2008. Mexico saw anti-emo riots the same year. Saudi Arabia arrested emo girls in 2010, accusing them of imitating men. More broadly, several of Iraqs Gulf neighbours – Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE – have cracked down on women wearing masculine clothes, or on men dressing like women.

Iraq is a devastated society with a broken political process and a fractured public. Its been through violent traumas with little control over its collective fate. The death and disappearance of thousands of men recast gender roles; the influx of consumer goods and cultures discombobulated values. Its ripe for recurrent moral panics, scapegoating marginal groups. The anxieties are the same as have historically been seen in other societies, including the UK. But in Iraq, panic carries a gun.

There is one sign of hope. Prominent political figures, including members of Iraqs parliament, have called for an investigation of these killings. Amid mounting public attention to the crimes, Moqtada al-Sadr and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shia leader, condemned them. This indignation, even if insincere, is radically different from the silence that shrouded the anti-gay massacres of 2009.

This suggests that its not just wrong, its counterproductive to call these murders gay killings, as some have done. Gays are among the victims, but the fears fuelling the violence go beyond sexuality. Its important that Iraq begins to have a debate about difference. Iraqis need to discuss why the horrors of the last four decades have made otherness seem intolerable. They must ask why politics focuses not on problems and solutions, but on enemies and guilt. The questions go to the core of a damaged society. The corpses of dead children demand not just justice, but answers.

The Angelina County Genealogical Society will meet at 5 pm Monday in the Community Meeting Room of Kurth Memorial Library, 706 Raguet St.

The program for the Monday meeting will be presented by ACGS member, Billie Grunden of Jasper, titled “My Genealogical Journey to the War Of 1812.” Grunden’s PowerPoint presentation is expected to describe some basic research techniques useful in finding information about researching family history and genealogy in the War of 1812 era. The ACGS executive board is expected to meet at 4 pm at Kurth Memorial Library prior to the regular society meeting and program. All executive board meetings are open to the society membership and all society meetings are open to the public.

Wendell Berry, one of the original proponents of the principle of sustainability and a major social critic of 20th and now 21st century American society, has made surprisingly repeated references to Confucius and Confucian writings in his works. I say surprisingly because Berry, at first glance, might not seem like someone who would find a complement to his own ideas on American culture and community as well as his Christian faith in a source seemingly so far removed as the writings of the Confucian tradition.

Berry, author of more than 50 books crisscrossing genres of essay, poetry and novel, has presented a penetrating analysis of the malaise of American society. His seminal work, The Unsettling of America: Culture Agriculture (1977), argues for the restoration of community and culture to the values of a life where sustainability is grounded in moral values for the way in which we treat ourselves and others as well as the land itself.

Berry speaks forcefully and eloquently to the loss of our sustainability in our loss to the pressures of a commercial world whose only product is not progress, but the material aggrandizement centered upon the generation of me.

He speaks passionately of those elements of our society that have gone the way of corporate America — family values, community values, societal values, and agrarian values — all gone in the name of the mighty dollar.

Behind these observations lies the thoughts of a man who has farmed in the hills of Kentucky for multiple decades and who is profoundly religious in his Christian faith, a faith he sees as potentially instrumental in returning humankind to their roots of a true moral community.

As Berry seeks analogs of a model for moral community, he finds Confucius. And what would Confucius say?

Lets look at the ways in which Berry finds Confucius and Confucian teachings a model for the very kind of community Berry sees as quintessential to the rectification of American society.

In his essay The Way of Ignorance in the book of the same name (2005), Berry cites example after example of what he refers to as the profound and arrogant ignorance of humankind as we stumble forward toward our own destruction and the ruination of the world in which we live. He talks of the necessity of a change in the human spirit, a change in outlook, a change that will bring humanity to realize the vanity of its ways.

Such a change, what he calls a change of heart, is part, he believes, of the quintessential core of every religion. Granted that it is seminal to all religious traditions, Berry says he finds particularly insightful the way in which the call for change is spoken to in Confucian teachings.

The particular Confucian teaching that is primarily the object of his focus is a short text, Ta-hsüeh, Great Learning or in the translation of Ezra Pound used by Berry, The Great Digest. It has been one of the most important of Confucian writings throughout East Asia for the last 2000 years. Combined with three other texts, Confucian Analects, Mencius and Doctrine of the Mean, it was a critical part of what became known as the Four Books, the collection that was the primary basis for all Confucian education up to the 20th century throughout the Confucian world.

What is the teaching of the Great Learning? It is a model of the path of learning to become a person of goodness and humaneness, taking the individual from self-learning to learning in the world through rectification of self, family, society and the world at large. This is a learning that begins with the thorough learning and discipline of the self.

Just as Confucius had said that the Noble Person, chün tzu, takes responsibility for himself while the petty person always blames others (Analects XV:20), the Great Learning is rooted in the importance of the transformation of the individual first and foremost. Such a change in the individual is the apriori condition to any change or transformation that can be anticipated in society or the world at large.

And what is the nature of this change in the individual? It is the learning of goodness and humaneness, jen, exemplified by the model of the Noble Person, chün tzu, a figure committed to learning for the transformation of the self in order to lead in the transformation of the world.

The Great Learning offers a learning that focuses upon the change of heart Berry sees as so crucial to our own time and condition, a way in which there can be a rectification toward goodness of self and society and thus the sustainability of our world.

Such learning is the antidote for Berry to what he sees as the arrogance, the greed, and the selfishness that constitutes the dominant cultural paradigm of our own time — individual, society and world out of control with their own self-absorption. Sustainability, on the other hand, demands a moral commitment to self and society alike. It can be said in no clearer way then when Berry quotes the Great Learning in The Unsettling of America: Culture Agriculture, … wanting good government in their states, they first established order in their own families; wanting order in the home, they first disciplined themselves….

From ancient China to the contemporary hill farms of Kentucky — a universal message in response to a universal problem.

The speaker ahead of me at the NAPF conference in Edinburgh was the impressive First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond, who, incidentally is called the FM by his staff. In his speech, and confirmed in a private conversation we had afterwards, the FM revealed he had spoken to David Cameron a couple of weeks earlier and the conversation turned to shovel-ready projects. The PM told the FM he had no projects that were through the planning process and would be ready before 2014 at the earliest. This is an astonishing admission of incompetence and is consistent with Vince Cables view, expressed in his leaked letter, that the Government has no coherent or joined-up growth plan.

Never one to let a good political moment go by, the FM sent a letter to the PM containing 20 infrastructure projects worth about £300m that the Scottish government had ready to go immediately if they were funded. This shows how out of touch Cameron is, as presumably every local authority could come up with several projects that are ready to go in a heartbeat. How embarrassing!

I arrived home in New Hampshire to welcome warm temperatures; it was 22C when I landed compared with an average high for the state in March of 5C. New England has been unseasonably warm all winter. We have had little or no snow. Consequently, the snowmobile cross-country trails near my house have remained closed, which has a negative effect on the local economy including gas stations, hotels and restaurants.

On the lake where I live the residents association has an annual ice-out competition to predict the date and time the flag that is set on the ice sinks. Last year ice-out occurred on 19 April and my bet is on 7 April at 3pm, but I am not hopeful of winning.

My return also coincided with the annual town meeting voting session, held at the fire station, to vote on the $3m (£1.89m) budget which is 11 per cent less than it was in 2008. The major components of the budget are for police, fire, road maintenance and administrative staff. Polls were open all day for the 1994 registered voters, of whom 964 actually balloted this time. The budget was approved, we re-elected the chief of police for another three-year term and voted in a new cemetery trustee.

A number of warrants were approved, including purchasing a backhoe loader with 4WD, buckets, a thumb and multiple function hydraulics. Of the 14 towns in my area that voted that day and for which we have polling data, half had less than 500 voters while the largest had 1,260. One town voted to raise $2,100 for the police department to purchase a semi-automatic rifle, ammunition for training and a locking mount to secure it to a police cruiser.

This really is the small society in action. What is voted on is very limited and confined mostly to the minimal communal services needed by a small rural town in the 19th century – fire, police and roads. Education spending is voted on at county level, which includes several towns.

Other public services are provided at the state and federal level, essentially because there are economies of scale. Why people attend meetings and vote is ultimately, in my view, because they get to decide how the money is actually spent. But meetings only occur once or twice a year and local control is limited.

US states have powers to tax and spend and there are many different models. The next state over, Vermont has both a state sales tax and a state income tax. New Hampshire, the Live Free or Die state, has no broad-based taxes. Most revenue is raised from local property taxes, which vary markedly from town to town. As a result, there are big differences between rich and poor towns in New Hampshire in the quality of services provided, especially education, which is the subject of endless litigation.

Apparently, small, New England towns like mine were the model Steve Hilton had for his worthless Big Society idea that the public still doesnt understand.

Our small society model is not used in Americas urban areas, as it is totally impractical when the electorate is bigger than a couple of thousand, meaning it has zero applicability in the UK.

Tiny New Hampshire towns have considerable control over spending, on the limited set of items they do determine, which presumably Cameron does not want for the UK, where the Treasury dominates all.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the Big Society is nothing more than a thinly disguised cover for a Thatcherite attack on the state.

The private sector was never likely to replace the jobs culled in the public sector in the depths of a recession when banks were not lending. This was always about ideology rather than serious economics; the haves versus the have nots.

The latest labour market release last week showed that since June 2010, public sector employment is down by 350,000. Education is down 94,000, police by 25,000, health and social work by 27,000 and the NHS, which was supposed to be safe in the Coalitions hands but clearly isnt, is down by 35,000. Private sector employment is up 320,000, which means that total UK employment is down by 30,000 and unemployment is up by 200,000 and there is no sign that the Government cares. The poor, the weak, the young, women and the unemployed are on their own in Camerons version of the Poor Laws.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer should fund the FMs projects in his Budget next week, but I doubt he will. As ever with this lot, politics dominates the economics. Mr Salmond has shown this week that they arent very good at either.

David Blanchflower is professor of economics at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, and a former member of the Bank of Englands Monetary Policy Committee.

The Cudner-Hyatt House at 937 Post Road in Scarsdale is a two-story, white clapboard farmhouse built in 1734. The Historical Society, which has maintained the home as a museum since 1974, wants to have it rezoned back to a single family residence so it could rent, sell or pass it off to another organization. / Randi Weiner/The Journal News