Berkeley Political Review Winter 2013

INSIDE:

WHAT’S NEXT?

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

BERKELEY POLITICAL REVIEW

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A LOOK INTO THE FUTURE As 2012 ends, BPR glimpses into 2013—and beyond

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he year 2012 was an eventful one in the political world.

In the United States, President Barack Obama was reelected for another four-year term, while control over

Congress remains divided between the Democratic and Repub-

EDITOR’S NOTE

lican parties. Europe remains mired in the Eurozone debt crisis and its problems threaten to pull the rest of the world back into a recession. Meanwhile, in Asia, tensions continue to flare between the region’s two biggest powers, China and Japan, as both countries undergo a leadership transition. In the Middle East, always the powder keg, conflict once again erupted between Israel and Palestine, though the latter managed to win recognition in the United Nations as a “non-member state”.

Domestically, marriage equality and marijuana legalization

also won decisive victories in several states, marking a turning point in American public opinion on these often controversial, but important issues. In California, two major events will shape the future of our state: the passage of Prop 30—which grants a reprieve to the UC system—and the election of a Democratic supermajority in the state legislature.

Although BPR has covered many of these issues with dili-

gence, for this edition, we will take the opportunity provided to us by these sea changes in politics to take a look into the future, at the possibilities of 2013—and beyond.

In the California section, Maria Buxton takes a look at the future of Affirmative Action on page 5, while Allison Arnold writes online about our state’s water problems. At a National level, Anna Bella Korbatov examines the feasibility of Germany’s apprenticeship model for the United States on page 13, while International Editor Alex Heyn writes about the problems that continue to plague Japan on page 12. Writer Brendan Pinder also opines about the relationship between the GOP and the Liberatarian Party, while Jacqueline Alas rounds out this issue with a piece on Moving Fashion, or the concept that fashion can be captured not only in still images but also in film.

We hope that, once again, BPR serves to enlighten and inform you on the critical issues of the day. Best of luck in this new year, and we at BPR wish you success on your endeavors!

All the best, Hinh Tran Editor-in-Chief

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Hinh Tran DEPUTY EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Niku Jafarnia MANAGING EDITOR Daniel Tuchler DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR Tanay Kothari INTERNATIONAL EDITOR Alex Heyn NATIONAL EDITOR Luis Flores DEPUTY NATIONAL EDITOR Kyle Bowen CALIFORNIA EDITOR Elena Kempf OPINION EDITOR Alex Kravitz ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR Norman Cahn BLOG EDITOR Wil Mumby DESIGN EDITOR Kathleen Sheffer DEPUTY DESIGN EDITOR Deepika Dilip OUTREACH EDITOR Justin Lin STAFF Ada Lin, Adeeba Hasan, Allison Arnold, Ankit Aggarwal, Anna Bella Korbatov, Arjan Sidhu, Ben Goldblatt, Brendan Pinder, Carrie Yang, Chinmai Raman, Disha Banik, Felix Cruz, Ha Duong, Harkaran Singh, Jacqueline Alas, Julia Kuchman, Katie McCray, Keith Kuk, Komal Devjani, Laila Samimi, Mandy Honeychurch, Maria Buxton, Martina Chun, Mary Zhou, Matthew Symonds, Matthew Calvert, Michael Manset, Nashilu MouenMakoua, Nicholas Kitchel, Nikhil Kotecha, Ryan Hang, Samuel Meyers, Sebastien Welch, Shayna Howitt, Stuart Fine, Tina Parija, Tom Hughes, Vinayak Ganeshan, Viveka Jagadeesan, Woody Little, Zac Commins ADVISOR Susan Rasky The content of this publication does not reflect the views of the University of California, Berkeley or the ASUC. Advertisements appearing in the Berkeley Political Review reflect the views of the advertisers only. They are not an expression of editorial opinion or views of the staff.

California +Alternative Action +The Demise of UC Berkeley +UC Berkeley’s Bright Future +A Permanent Republican Minority?

-ONLINE+Thirsty California +Public Wealth +Winds of Change

+California’s Prison Problem +Vocational Training in a Changing Economy

-ONLINE+Population Growth +Green on Blue +Educations Left Behind

+Starting the Fire

+The Next Proliferation +The German Apprenticeship System +Welcome to the E-lectorate

+Climate Change -ONLINE+The Debt Crisis

International +A Chinese Metamorphosis +From Shadow Games to Peace +The Once and Fading King +A Future of Cyberspace

National +How Feminism Became the New F Word and How to Fix It +A Look to the Future

Arts & Entertainment +Eminem is 40? +The Future of Cinema +Moving Fashion

Opinion +LP and the GOP +Boricual Rights +For Whom the Bell Tolls

-ONLINE+UC, Inc.? +When Service Becomes Selfish

All stories listed in the Table of Contents can be found online at bpr.berkeley.edu if not in the print issue as well.

PHOTOS ON THE COVER: Drone - The Diplomat Campanile - Elena Kempf, California Editor Hurricane Sandy - Brandon Stanton, Humans of New York Obama’s Victory - Palm Beach Post Flag of The Muslim Brotherhood - Demotix Kim Jong-un - The Telegraph Troops Leaving Afghanistan - Denver Post Climate Change - Time

Photo by Elena Kempf, California Editor

A California man ticketed for driving in the carpool lane alone claims that he was there legally because he was carrying with him incorporation papers, alluding to the concept of corporate personhood and the Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court. The man, Jonathan Frieman, will challenge the ticket in court with his legal theory.

John Bolton, former US ambassador to the United Nations under George W. Bush, accused Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of faking a “diplomatic illness” to avoid testifying in Congress about the Benghazi attacks. Clinton was hospitalized with a concussion to the head and a resulting blood clot. She will return to testify before Congress in late January.

Amidst the second year of civil war, Syrian President Bashar alAssad gave a speech to a crowd of raucous supporters in the Damascus Opera House attacking rebel forces as “terrorists” who “know nothing but the language of blood”. He also called them “enemies of God” and promised to send them “to hell”. The speech was seen by many as an attempt to rally the morale of government forces after months of military setbacks. The international community largely condemned his speech and called for an end to the conflict, which has claimed the lives of over 40,000.

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons

Newly elected Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) called for a shutdown of the federal government unless massive spending cuts are enacted, mentioning the 1995 shutdown that crippled government operations.

He called for Congress to “hold strong again” in the impending showdown over the nation’s $16 trillion debt ceiling.

In response to the national tragedy suffered at the Sandy Hook school shootings, the National Rifle Association has called for the government to post “armed guards” at schools to prevent another massacre. Since then, the NRA has elaborated on its plans to deploy former members of the police or military, recruit armed volunteers, and train school personnel on the operation of firearms.

Democrats, on the other hand, are preparing a raft of gun control legislation, setting up a major legislative battle for 2013.

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How the End of Affirmative Action Could Be the Beginning of a Better California

Source: Wikimedia Commons

BY MARIA BUXTON, Staff Writer

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fter California passed Proposition 209 in 1996, banning the use of sex, race, or ethnicity in the admissions process of public schools, under-represented minority presence in the UC system has declined by over 10 percentage points. Now that Affirmative Action is a thing of the past, Californians must ask themselves what this policy was really trying to solve.

With economic inequality in the United States at an all-time high, the need for increasing minority college graduation rates is more pressing than ever— but is the admissions process the most effective place to target inequality? The discussion has already begun to shift from campus diversity to the real cause for concern: the inequality caused by disparity in access to education.

According to the Pew Research Centre, the white/non-white wealth gap is at its highest level since 1988 due to the disproportionate effect of the subprime mortgage crisis on minorities.

This inequality is most concentrated in states hardest hit by the recent crisis, like California. Education is the key to correcting this disparity, since a college degree now raises family income by 13%.

But minority groups lag far behind whites in California’s graduation rates. Affirmative Action was an easy way to increase minority representation in the UC, but did it really ad-

dress the issue it attempted to solve?

Shawn Lewis, President of Berkeley College Republicans argues that “affirmative action seeks to move the goal posts after the damage has been done...

We need to focus on how they got in this position in the first place.” The issue of inequality in education runs deeper than affirmative action can fix. Accepting a student into a rigorous university from a failing K-12 system to increase the representation of an ethnic group does not foster success in the long run. This is evident in the decline in minority dropout rates after Prop 209.

With affirmative action no longer an option, the University of California is exploring new ways to approach education inequality. The Eligibility in Local Context program allows the UC to review the applications of the top 9% of seniors in every California high school taking into account students’ success within their local context. This prevents underprivileged students from being held back by the weakness of their school.

The UC’s policies reflect that it recognizes that education inequality begins long before the college application process. The UC has recently begun investing $7 million annually in an effort to encourage students in K-12 schools and community colleges to attend a four-year college. UC Berkeley specifically helps run the California College Preparatory Academy, a small charter school that sends al-

most all its students to four-year universities. 97% of CalPrep students are from underrepresented ethnic groups. The success of these students is not reflected in UC statistics, but the program serves a greater purpose.

UC Berkeley’s Vice Chancellor of Equity and Inclusion, Dr. Gibor Basri, explains that “we find we can have small but measurable effects in K-12 on college-going culture, preparation, and awareness of how to go about getting into college. These effects become larger when one works with a particular school, and still larger when focusing on particular students. We have good statistics on our effectiveness, and we do make a difference.”

The UC has the right idea. But there is much more to be done.

Unequal funding of K-12 schools in California prevents many minority students from ever having a chance of going to college. Proposition 13 is partly to blame for the inadequacy of California’s K-12 school system. Further reform of California’s public school system is the crucial next step in dealing with inequality. Basri admits that “[the effect of UC programs] is not large enough [of] a difference to overcome general educational inequity.”

Future California policymakers should follow the UC’s lead and look for new and innovative policies to target education inequality where it begins—well before a student applies to college. •

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The Demise of UC Berkeley The University’s Waning Public Character

BY SHAYNA HOWITT, Staff Writer

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erkeley is well on its way to no longer being the public university devoted to the California Master Plan of Higher Education that it once was. Instead of continuing to be committed to the public good of California, UC Berkeley has become a place stunted by financial worries and increased focus on high-paying out-of-state students.

California is facing daunting budget problems that cannot be fixed solely

by Proposition 30. The projected state budget shortfall of $28 billion for this fiscal year has led Sacramento policymakers to shift their spending priorities away from public education, putting a strain on UC Berkeley’s public budget.

Berkeley Assembly member Nancy Skinner points out that “one of the downsides of the state’s revenue funding problem is that, because we still have to function, we are creating a tug of war between public and private universities…[yet] California has benefitted greatly from our public universities, and that is something that cannot be lost.”

Drastic increases in tuition mean that fewer lower and middle class California residents are able to afford it. In 2012, tuition was more than $5,000 for one semester alone, a full 10% of the median American income. 67% of enrolled Berkeley students received financial aid, including loans, from the university in 2010-2011. In the 2011-2012 school year, 35% of those students received Pell grants and 25% were first generation college students. The class of 2016 applied for 8% more financial aid than the class of 2015. However, in the future, many of these students might be forced to disregard Berkeley because of its rising price. California is less and less likely to be able to subsidize higher education at the rate it currently does.

Meanwhile, private schools are increasingly able to offer more competitive scholarships to incoming freshmen.

Last year, the UC system admitted 43% more out-of-state and international students than the year be-

fore. Approximately 20% of current UC Berkeley undergraduates come from outside California. This is significantly higher than the UC system as a whole, as UC Berkeley’s prestige attracts out-of-state applicants.

The approximately $11,000 of additional tuition which these students pay should help ease budgetary concerns. However, the question is how to preserve UC’s Berkeley’s distinct responsibility for the public good of California and its citizens with plummeting numbers of in-state enrollment.

In 1990, the state paid 78% of the cost to educate a University of California student, today that figure is only 48%. The numbers are even worse at UC Berkeley, where student fees amounted to about $310 million of the total budget last year and might even increase to $340 million next year.

Yet state support for UC Berkeley is hovering below $300 million. For the first time in the history of UC Berkeley, students pay for a greater proportion of their education than the state.

Great universities such as Berkeley tend to find ways out of their crises. However, UC Berkeley’s public mission might be lost to well-meaning privatization attempts. It will no longer be able to live up to its original promise to welcome and serve all segments of California’s population.

Assembly member Skinner emphasizes this point by explaining “public schools, by their nature, by their charter, have a different mandate than the private universities.”

She further summarizes that schools like UC Berkeley have an obligation to address statewide needs and be responsive to the general public.

After almost one hundred and fifty years, UC Berkeley is on track to no longer being able to maintain the delicate balance between its public school title and the private donations and grants it accepts. The increasing number of out-of-state students and a rocketing tuition foreshadow a further test to this balance. •

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UC Berkeley’s Bright Future Solving the Crisis Together

BY KATIE MCCRAY, Staff Writer

aid is available for students unable to afford UC Berkeley’s rising cost. Acudget cuts throughout Cali- cording to Hernandez, “CAA awarded fornia have hit its public high- $1.9 million to 680 Cal students for the er education system. At UC 2012-2013 academic year,” which she Berkeley, drastic tuition hikes and pro- considers “perhaps the most important gram cuts have caused many people to philanthropic outcome” of CAA’s extenbe concerned for the school’s future. sive fundraising. Though UC Berkeley However, in recent years private fun- may no longer be able to offer low tuition draising has increased substantially. education, an emphasis on expanding While UC Berkeley will financial aid can enno longer be a tuitionsure that a wide varifree institution of higher ety of students have the “AN education, private philopportunity to attend. anthropic donations Students at UC EMPHASIS ON can ensure that Cal Berkeley are also beginEXPANDING remains an accessible ning to take on a dynamand first-rate university. FINANCIAL AID ic fundraising role. The The erosion of state CAN ENSURE Senior Gift Campaign funding for universities an organization THAT A WIDE (SGC), and colleges throughmade up of students VARIETY OF out California has been of each year’s graduatoccurring for decades. ing class, is devoted to STUDENTS Currently, this fundfundraising for current HAVE THE ing is at an all time and future Berkeley stulow; at UC Berkeley it OPPORTUNITY dents. Donations can makes up only eleven TO ATTEND.” benefit specific colleges percent of the campus or go to the Cal Fund, budget.

While meawhich benefits the entire sures such as Proposition 30 have campus. Services such as Bearwalk, brought some state funding back to a free night safety service for Cal stuCal, far more focus has been placed dents, are supported by the Cal Fund on fundraising from private donors. and rely on donations made by SGC. Already, “private philanthropy is the SGC’s Class of 2012 raised number two funding source for Cal, $104,096.30 for UC Berkeley—a drajust below federal funding,” explains matic increase from Class of 2000’s Jennifer Hernandez, director of An- $33,844. Berkeley alumnus Zareen nual Giving at Cal Alumni Association. Khan, the director of SGC, has high UC Berkeley has an extensive alum- hopes for SGC’s future as a crucial ni network that has remained largely source of philanthropic funding. “Stuuntapped but is making an effort to dents are understanding how imporrespond to Berkeley’s current and fu- tant philanthropy is,” she explains. ture needs. The Cal Alumni Association “This is where it all starts.” Not only are (CAA), which has been “serving alumni more students joining SGC (this year’s and supporting the University of Cali- committee is made up of 55 seniors, far fornia since its founding in 1872,” more than the 16 students in 2007), has expanded its fundraising efforts they are also reaching a wider audisignificantly in the past few years. In ence and encouraging current students 2007, CAA drafted a “Strategic Plan” to start giving back right away. “If you responding directly to Berkeley’s in- get an individual to make a gift three creasing need for financial support. times in a row within their first three The “New Alumni Challenge” is a pro- years of graduation, they are more gram in its fourth year that encourages likely to be a lifelong giver,” says Khan. undergraduate and graduate alumni Newly appointed chancellor Nicholas who have graduated in the past few Dirks is also optimistic about the beneyears to donate to any UC Berkeley ficial role that private funding can have school, college, or program. By donat- for UC Berkeley. According to Dirks, ing through this Challenge, contri- “fundraising is about a relationship. butions of up to $1000 are doubled. It’s about a relationship with a common CAA is making a concentrated effort commitment to an institution.” Conto not only support UC Berkeley as a centrating on private funding is necesuniversity, but individual students as sary to ensure UC Berkeley’s future, well. CAA and other organizations are guaranteeing future students a worldtaking steps to ensure that financial class education at an affordable price. •

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Source: Ansel Adams via Fiat Lux Source: Ansel Adams via Fiat Lux

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A Republican Minority?

The Future of the California GOP

BY MICHAEL MANSET, Staff Writer

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he 2012 elections should have been a great opportunity for the California Republican Party.

With unemployment over ten percent, the state once again faced a budget deficit, and the Democratic-controlled state legislature held an approval rating of 21% among likely voters. However, the Republican Party, which did poorly in the 2010 elections, once again underperformed, losing many key congressional races and now holding only one-third of the seats in the State Assembly and even less in the State Senate.

Post-election, the California Republican Party is in an extremely weak position.

Republican party registration is in a downward trajectory, falling under 30% of registered voters this past election. In contrast, the Democratic Party flourished in the 2012 elections. Not only did Democrats gain multiple congressional seats, but they have earned a long-coveted two-thirds supermajority in both houses of the state legislature, allowing them to raise taxes and place constitutional amendments before the voters. In conjunction with the Democratic control of all statewide offices, the Republican Party has been rendered politically impotent until the 2014 elections. Once, they could use a statewide office to implement their agenda or at least stifle the Democratic majority’s budget priorities in the legislature. Now Republicans lack even that limited power.

California Republicans cannot observe the current state of affairs and merely shrug it off as a temporary electoral setback.

The collapse of their support in the state hints at intensifying, long-term trends. The first of these is ideological. In a CNN exit poll of California voters conducted this past election, 69% of respondents said abortion should be legal, 56% backed same-sex marriage, and 63% supported raises in income taxes on everyone or only those making over $250 thousand annually. The party cannot afford to be significantly out-

of-step with the voters on these issues.

The second trend that threatens the party is demographic. Latino voters are becoming not only an increasingly large part of the electorate, but are also emerging as a major part of the Democratic base with President Obama earning 80% of the Latino vote in California.

Ever since Republican Governor Pete Wilson embraced Proposition 187— which prevented illegal immigrants from accessing public education, health care, and other social services— in 1994, Republicans have fared poorly among Hispanics in California. Polling indicates that Latinos care about the economy, education, and other issues more than immigration, but “for many of these voters, immigration is a threshold issue,” says Republican political strategist and UC Berkeley lecturer Dan Schnur. “A Latino small business owner is probably not going to listen to what you have to say about a capital gains tax if he thinks you want him and his children to be forced to leave the country.”

The state party has been further hurt not only by its own positions on illegal immigration, but by its ties to more conservative positions advocated by members of the national Republican Party. Without a change in course, Republican unpopularity among Latino voters will only further harm their electoral prospects over time, as over half of the state’s voters between eighteen and twenty-nine are Hispanic.

The California Republican Party, now stripped of most of its policy-making influence, has the choice between two paths that will determine its future success.

The first is to rebuild and readjust its positions closer to the political center in California,

preparing for future elections. In the shorter term, Schnur says that “there is an opportunity for Republicans to engage and steer the course” in policy discussions that will pit Governor Jerry Brown against more liberal members of the legislature. The second path is to resist taking a more pragmatic approach and zealously maintain extreme ideological purity, risking remaining a minor-party in a de-facto one-party state for the foreseeable future. •

Illustration by Xio Alvarez

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CALIFORNIA The Future of Water in California

BY ALLISON ARNOLD, Staff Writer

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acing a rapid decrease in water supply, the future of California’s water is now. Why? The increasing population of California, the deterioration of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, and the chronic drought seen throughout the state are the most pressing issues at the root of the crisis.

According to population estimates made by researchers at USC, the state’s total population will increase from today’s 38 million to 60 million by the year 2050, an increase of over 56% from the projections made in 2000. As the state’s population continues to grow, existing water supplies will be strained, and will bring into question the ability of California to accommodate this expected growth.

Similarly, the landscape of today looks nothing like California 100 years ago.

Water development projects have transformed deserts into farmland and farmland into marshes. These water projects have been one of the factors that have made California a leading agricultural producer, a major manufacturing center, the most populated state in the country, and the ninth largest economy in the world.

However, this rapid environmental change has not been without its consequences.

A representative from Glendale Water and Power in southern California warns, “The water crisis of California is rooted into the fact that it doesn’t rain when we want it to rain,

and it doesn’t rain where we want it to rain, and we don’t have water where we need the water, we have water where it is. We have had to pipe [water] into the urban areas on the coast, so we developed this elaborate water system from top to bottom for big agriculture and rising urban areas. The success of California lies in the capability to transport water where it needs to go”.

The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a key link in the water system of California, has been described as, “A natural estuary of more than 738,000 acres, the Delta is the outlet through which more than 25 million people and 2.5 million acres of productive farmland receive their water”(Calwatercrisis.org).

Delta levees are instrumental in preventing the salty water of the San Francisco Bay from contaminating fresh water that supply’s many cities and farms.

One of the main worries is whether or not these 100-year-old levees will be able to withstand the famous Californian earthquakes. NBC news warns that a 6.5 magnitude earthquake would cause serious damage to the levees, which could result in flooding and pollution of fresh water. A disruption of this size would also greatly affect California’s distribution capabilities. To

make matters worse, California’s water reserves are at a dangerously low level, and if the Delta’s levees were damaged due to heavy flooding or an earthquake, it is unlikely that California would have the water to meet the public’s needs.

On top of the Delta crisis, California has been experiencing chronic drought, and “2012 is beginning to look like it will be one of our drier water years, currently running in the lower 20 percent rank of years”(California.gov). These warmer conditions will result in a longterm and significant loss of snow in the Coast Ranges and Southern California mountains, and in the lower and mid-elevations of the Sierra Nevada according to projections made by California.gov. Less snowpack means less natural water storage. California’s mountain snowpack serves as a natural reservoir that is essential to water supply, unfortunately this resource is highly sensitive to climate change.

Because much of California is highly dependent on these snowpack reservoirs, and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the state’s complex and already stressed water management system will be further strained.

Though steps are being taken to cope with the changing climate, the state needs to do Source: Wikimedia Commons more in order to ensure the availability of clean water for our citizens in times of crisis.

Adapting the state’s water management systems to climate change presents one of California’s most significant challenges for the 21st century. •

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PUBLIC California’s 1% and their Pet Propositions

Source: AP

BY TOM HUGHES, Staff Writer

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ommon criticisms of lawmakers are that they are all out-of-touch plutocrats, interested in serving only themselves and a few special interests regardless of the concerns of their constituents, While the verity of these attacks may vary from politician to politician, there is a breed of “lawmaker” that escapes the traditional definition: the unelected self-funders. In California, the super-wealthy are occasionally candidates for major office, as was the case in 2010, when former eBay CEO Meg Whitman ran for governor and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina ran for Senate. But more frequently, they are involved in devising, promoting, and (heavily) funding ballot initiatives.

So many aspects of California’s public policy have been altered by direct democracy that it has developed into a crucial, if not the dominant, tool of lawmaking in the state. As such, it has become an attractive outlet for affluent Californians for whom writing a letter to their state senator or mak-

ing a limited donation to some candidate’s campaign does not produce the change they seek fast enough.

The 2012 election, in which eleven propositions were on the November ballot, provided an example of the type of people who fund ballot initiatives. Unlike with candidate-centered campaigns, there is no legal limit on how much any group or individual can contribute to a campaign to pass or defeat a ballot initiative. Some of the state’s highest-profile initiatives, such as Proposition 30, a tax increase to fund education, and Proposition 32, a campaign spending measure that targeted unions, were supported and opposed by coalitions of individuals, organizations, businesses, labor unions, and political parties. But some initiatives, particularly Propositions 33, 38, and 39, stood out as the pet projects of certain individuals.

Proposition 33, an initiative that would have changed auto insurance laws to allow insurance companies to base their rates on continuous coverage, received nearly $17 million from George Joseph, the chair of Mercury

Insurance, a contribution that dwarfed all other contributions for and against the measure. Proposition 38, a tax increase measure to fund schools that was seen as a rival to Governor Jerry Brown’s Prop 30, received $44 million from civil rights lawyer Molly Munger.

And Proposition 39, which changed corporate tax laws to fund clean energy projects, got over $29 million from hedge fund manager Thomas Steyer. Yet despite the inordinate sums spent on these campaigns, only Prop 39 passed, while the other two failed.

From this November’s results alone, it is unclear how voters feel about ballot initiatives sponsored almost exclusively by single donors. However, the evidence suggests that these donors are not easily deterred. Despite the fact that Proposition 17, an initiative almost identical to Prop 33, was defeated only two years ago after Mercury Insurance spent over $14 million in its support, Mercury’s chair was not discouraged from spending massive sums again this year, perhaps feeling that 33 would get less negative attention on the crowded November ballot.

2012 is unlikely to be the last year the Mungers, the Steyers, or any of California’s other wealthy families are seen trying to influence public policy.

Munger followed in the footsteps of her brother, Charles Munger, Jr., who was behind the initiatives that set up the state’s new redistricting commission, and who was a big supporter of Prop 32 and opponent of 30. Thomas Steyer is expected to have statewide or even national political ambitions. It’s very plausible that the state GOP, which, two years out, lacks any obvious aspirants for governorship in 2014, may again seek a socially moderate corporate icon to carry their banner.

Visionary? Arrogant? Plutocratic—or truly democratic? Voters tend to be wary of the political activities of the super wealthy, yet strongly attached to the idea that the ballot gives them great power, independent of outside influence. The way that voters view these big spenders and their influence on California’s public policy will shape the state’s future. •

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Political and demographic trends may open the door to state level immigration reform

BY SAMUEL MEYERS, Staff Writer

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he 2012 elections ensure a continuation of the federal policy against deporting DREAM Act eligible immigrants and a new political dynamic in the California state government with a vastly more powerful Democratic Party tightening their control in both state houses as well as securing the governorship.

Governor Brown signed a law to allow driver licenses for some illegal immigrants, but also took a swing towards the center by vetoing the TRUST Act. While the Governor agreed with the sentiment of the bill, noting that “federal agents shouldn’t try to coerce local law enforcement officers into detaining people who’ve been picked up for minor offenses and pose no reasonable threat to their community,” he took issue with the bill’s interference in local sheriffs’ discretion to comply or not comply with ICE’s requests for holding. Overall, California’s Democratic Party leaders appear willing to be taking moderate paths towards immigration policy reform.

With a new Democratic supermajority, Republican leadership looking towards internal reforms, and the rapid expansion and political integration of California’s Latino population, California should expect to see substantial action taken on issues surrounding immigration. Republicans may be more willing to compromise on moderate or even more liberal immigration policies, even though much of the Hispanic support for the Democratic Party does not hinge on immigration policy.

According to Professor Bloemraad, professor of sociology at UC Berkeley, California may experience action on a more local level, with some larger cities with high immigrant populations emboldened to continue “citizenship of the cities” programs, including giving undocumented immigrants ID cards and more local protections.

There may also be “a shift in local

Source: Wikimedia Commons

laws oriented not just towards immigration policy, but policies surrounding public health, English language ordinances, and labor laws for immigrants.” Labor policy will likely be a crucial component of future efforts to address immigration reform, considering that immigrants comprise more than a third of the California labor force, figuring prominently in economics sector such as agriculture, manufacturing and services according to the Immigration Policy Center.

Efforts like the DREAM Act have are partial attempts to change a primarily low-skill low-wage segment of the labor force into higher-skill workers, but more comprehensive immigration policy may be forthcoming emphasizing high-skill labor in addition to lowskill labor necessary for many of California’s industries.

Regarding the state level, Bloemraad mentions a potential shift in immigration policies away from those geared only towards youth like the DREAM Act and more towards the practices like improving living conditions for undoc-

umented workers in the Central Valley or the introducing California identity cards, a potentially bipartisan idea and one similar to the law Governor Brown signed recently.

However, the state can only do so much if it has to go against federal authorities, and can only object to more restrictive and punitive federal policies if they are willing to forgo the incentives the federal government offers.

California may butt heads with federal authorities over issues like E-verify and deportation policies, which could ultimately result in a double pronged strategy of employee sanctions and DREAM Act-esque policies of dealing with California’s immigrants, depending largely on federal policy.

Recent dynamics portend potentially vast changes in the future of immigration in the state. Even if many of the more controversial and significant actions depend on what the state’s relationship with the federal immigration authorities will be, there is hope for effective bipartisan solutions on the state and local levels. •

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Challenges to the state’s criminal justice system

Source: Wikimedia Commons

BY MARY ZHOU, Staff Writer

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overnor Jerry Brown conceded in September 2012 that California most likely will not meet its requirement of reducing prisons to 137.5% of their capacity by June 2013, a capacity the Supreme Court established in Brown vs. Plata.

This issue of overpopulation in California prisons is causing damage on both systemic and individual levels.

One systemic way to explain the state of California’s prison system are fixed sentences. Since Brown established fixed sentences in 1977, the system switched its focus from rehabilitation to punishment. Inmates no longer need to prove capacity to return back to society, so rehabilitative prison programs have dropped. According to East Bay Express, currently 65% of released inmates usually recommit crimes, compared to only 15% before 1977. In the past two years, California has slashed its budget for rehabilitation programs by $250 million. The public should be concerned because this decrease in rehab funding correlates with higher recidivism, meaning that the early release of these prisoners will endanger the whole community. The repeating of crimes will probably lead these prisoners back to jail.

Consequently, the overpopulation issue comes back to square one.

In 2008, California’s Prop 5, which would have expanded rehabilitation programs and allowed inmates to reduce their prison time if they participated in those programs, was defeated.

The fiscal costs would have exceeded $1 billion according to the San Francisco Chronicle. However, the passing of Prop 5 might have greatly mitigated California’s overpopulation problem.

Also attempting to solve the issue, Governor Brown recently implemented a realignment plan, so that those convicted of non-violent and non-sexual crimes would be sent to a county jail instead of a prison, where sheriffs would possess more discretion in dealing with the criminals. Regulations also stipulated that nonviolent offenders who broke terms of parole would be sent to jail, not prison.

Since the enactment of this realignment plan in 2011, the capacity of county jails has reached its maximum threshold as well. The influx of inmates has also led jails to release hundreds of their criminals prematurely. Conservatives particularly look at recidivism rates as evidence of realignment’s failure. Furthermore, many argue that the resort to county jails diminish the severity of the offenders’ crime. Final-

ly, local resources are strained. The state’s allocation of $500,000 to counties simply does not suffice.

California certainly has fewer inmates a year since the realignment plan. Since 2009, California has shrunk down its prison size by 30,000 inmates. And currently, Texas has overtaken California as the state with most inmates. The Economist reports that prison over-capacity stands at 155% in the present. The cost of holding one inmate beyond capacity is $25,000 per year. However, the outcome of Governor Brown’s realignment policy has been mostly ineffective due to the increase in recidivism and ineffectiveness of county jails.

The California prison system also has flaws on the individual level.

David Moss, a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union and a direct victim of the slashed rehabilitation budget, testifies to the problems in the prison system’s prioritization of interests. Having been arrested 12 times for illegal drugs, Moss explains that the repetition of his arrests was because the state failed to provide him treatment: “I was treated like a criminal. That was the only treatment I got.”

Furthermore, “you get incarcerated for a mental health issue,” illustrating that the state does not focus on rehabilitation to remove the root causes for the inmates’ commitment of crime.

The California criminal justice system has much to figure out. The economic consequences of erring are disastrous, and recidivism comes at a high societal and personal cost. Although overpopulation has been on the decline, progress moves slowly, and more efficient policies must be implemented in the future, starting with rehabilitation. Some suggest moving inmates with immigration charges to federal custody. Low-risk inmates with dependent children could also be moved to halfway houses. California may not achieve its capacity goal by June 2013, but it can start improving now. •

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How technology is changing California’s economy, and why education isn’t keeping up

BY MATTHEW CALVERT, Staff Writer

I

n a changing economy, California cannot afford to solely rely on universities to produce people with appropriate skills. As technology pushes the California economy into a new era of innovation, a lagging education system is not able to keep up and produce the people needed to fill an ever-changing job market.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that over the last year, unemployment has been falling fastest for those who hold an associate degree.

Vocational schools and community colleges do not tend to have the same reputation as universities, but they are becoming more important in the digital age. The United States have made it almost a necessity to complete a fouryear college degree to get a decent job, while in other countries such as Germany and Finland vocational schools lead to secure employment. Making a four year university education the only path towards prosperity hurts low-income individuals that lack the resources to attend these institutions.

Former Secretary of Labor and current Professor of Public Policy Robert Reich defends the place of both liberal arts and vocational schools.

Reich thinks that “at best, a liberal arts education trains young people to recognize and understand systems in which many different inputs affect one another, to recognize patterns [and]

think critically, to diagnose complex situations, identify [and solve] new problems, and to work collaboratively with others.” A liberal arts education is “the ideal preparation for the future of work.” While a liberal arts education prepares young people for their future careers, it usually does not prepare them for a specific job.

Vocational schools are limited in nature. While they can prepare someone with all of the information needed to practice a specific job, they for the most part do not supply broadly applicable skills. According to Reich, “the purpose of technical education is to provide a student with enough mastery of a field that he or she is able to enter it and then continuously learn on the job.” Any field is bound to change with the implementation of new innovation and technology, so the purpose of a technical education is more to get someone started than to prepare them for life. By providing access to entry-level jobs in important industries with specific skill sets, technical education can be vital to an economy.

While innovation is key, technology may be destroying jobs faster than it creates them. Reich says that while “historically, technological changes have always generated new jobs…we’re witnessing a new revolution in labor-replacing technologies that makes me less sure the future will replicate the past.” While labor used to be the backbone of the U.S. economy, technology is hurting those

who used to work in this sector. With the loss of manufacturing jobs, people find themselves out of work, lacking the skills needed in the new economy.

At the same time, technology is helping those working in the tertiary sector, such as Reich’s famous “symbolic analysts.” A symbolic analyst is someone who earns money by analyzing and manipulating symbols to solve problems. This kind of work can take place across numerous different sectors, with the symbols representing numbers, music, art, or money, but the unifying factor is that a lot of education is required to manipulate them properly.

California’s economy is transforming, and its education system is not transforming with it. The new jobs require specific skill sets, and generalized education is not preparing young people for jobs in applied science, technology, engineering or math. What is needed is a balance, as there is a place for both symbolic analysts and technical experts in the new technology-based economy.

With the defunding of the university system in California, fewer people have the opportunity of completing a four-year degree. This is bad for our state, and coupled with the lack of funding for community colleges and vocational schools for those looking to enter or re-enter the workforce, the result is devastating. If a renewed emphasis is not put on all forms of education, California will not be able to keep up with a fast-moving world. • Source: Wikimedia Commons

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INTERNATIONAL

Will the New Set of Leaders Choose to Shed the Country’s Old Policies, or Stay Hidden Within the Cocoon of Old?

China’s new leaders, who have the potential to change the face of the country. Source: Christian Science

BY VINAYAK GANESHAN, Staff Writer

E

ver since Deng Xiaopeng’s liberalization of China’s stagnant economy in the 1980s, the democratic aspirations of liberals within the country have floundered.

Empowered by the engines of economic growth, the Chinese electorate has largely been content with top-down authoritarian rule. After all, the state narrative stipulates that democracy is a tradeoff for stability and growth— something that millions of Chinese acknowledge as true. However, something about this story seems to have gone awry. China’s superheated growth engine has recently cooled, and the country’s middle class is finally clamoring for political rights.

On November 8th, 2012, President Hu Jintao made the first official recognition of this problem, telling the 18th National Congress that the country’s development was “unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable”. To add to these vexing issues, the Chinese Communist Party is undergoing a fundamental transition in power with replacements across the board. As this political transition occurs, the world is asking; how will China deal with cries for development and democracy?

To understand the country’s problems, we ought to first look at its upcoming leaders. As rumors circulated naming Mr. Xi Jinping as the next president, many were hopeful that he would aid the goals of the reformists in the country by changing antiquated economic and political policies.

Although evidence of his beliefs is at

best circumstantial, hints suggest that Mr. Xi shares a penchant for economic change. His economic stance largely mirrors that of his predecessor, Mr. Hu, who saw the country’s GDP quadruple in ten years due to reforms. Moreover, the newly anointed Prime Minister Li Keqiang sponsored the landmark jointstudy by the World Bank and Development Research Council of China, which advocates serious structural reforms in order to continue growth at a breakneck pace. In order to maintain stability and one-party control, the Politburo and executive committee are likely to revise fundamental economic rules in the next decade, including those that affect the role and benefits of state corporations, limitations on foreign direct investment and share trading.

Unfortunately, political liberalization

“China’s superheated growth engine has recently cooled.”

ers, delaying production of various goods, including apple products. When one prominent investor interviewed a manufacturer, he was told that, “workers can now yell at their bosses. It’s as if the tables have turned”. Chinese scholars generally classify the current state of the country as, ‘unstable at the grass-roots, dejected among the middle strata and out-of-control at the top.’

If the CCP’s one-party model is truly based upon economic legitimacy, then these stirrings will abate upon the implementation of market reforms. But if the party is wrong, then China is headed towards further social turmoil, as internal reports circulated within the party suggest. Given the growing trend of discontent with and within the party, it is exceedingly likely that the CCP will react, enacting moderate reforms to appease and staunch popular discontent.

In either case, China is at the crossroads of change. The model for growth implemented by Mr. Hu is unviable for future decades, for as one statesponsored scholar put it, the Hu era has created more problems than it has solved. China’s overheating economy has finally hit its cooldown stage, yielding inflated housing prices, an over-expansive and inefficient bureaucracy, and rules that stifle free expression. These problems will be bequeathed to a relatively amateur politburo, president and prime minister under whom China can perhaps exploit this unique opportunity to change economics and democratic participation along with its leadership. However, it’s far more likely to move along in fits and starts. •

“China is at the crossroads of change.”

seems to be a different story; Mr. Xi has attacked the notion of “choosing people simply on the basis of votes”.

His party agrees with his ideas. But the currents of change flow against their favor. Despite the vaunted “Great Firewall of China”, microblogs dissenting against the state have popped up in increasing numbers. On China’s main microblog website, Sina Weibo, roughly thirty million people voice their opinions daily. These blogs have injected a modicum of accountability in the state bureaucracy by outing corrupt politicians on the Internet.

On the ground, Chinese laborers have taken up arms against their employ-

INTERNATIONAL

winter 2013

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An Iranian Process

BY SEBASTIEN WELCH, Staff Writer

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ran is the world’s largest Shiite country, situated between Afghanistan and Pakistan to the East and Iraq to the West. It controls the Straits of Hormuz, where 20% of the world’s petroleum passes through each year. Over the last several years, the nation has come under heavy criticism from America for its suppression of pro-democracy movements, most notably the Green Movement in 2009.

Other points of contention lie in Iran’s support of Islamic militant organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, the Assad Regime, and accusations of cyber-attacks against the US. Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear program, viewed

by Israel and America as a way to develop weapons, is an ongoing source of conflict, with accusations of Israel assassinating lead Iranian scientists.

Current Iranian-American relations are a result of the Cold War’s legacy.

A loyal ally in the hands of Shah Reza Pahlavi, the 1979 Islamic Revolution overthrew the US-backed monarch and ushered in Ayatollah Khomeini as head of state. The subsequent Iranian hostage crisis, followed by the blunders of the USS Stark and USS Vincennes during the Iran-Iraq war led to a steady deterioration in relations between the two states. During the 1990’s, America followed a policy of benign neglect, choosing simply to ignore Iran at every possible turn.

However, the 9/11 attacks thrust the Middle East back to the fore in US policy. With Iran bordered on either side by countries embroiled in a war with America, benign neglect could not continue. The numerous rounds of nuclear talks with Iran have all stalled or failed, with the latest attempt occurring in June 2012. The halting of Iran’s nuclear program is of huge importance to Israel, which worries about an attack should Iran develop nuclear weapons. By extension of its alliance with Israel and other regional interests, America has a big stake in attempting to dissuade Iran of its nuclear ambitions. However, America’s main concern is not an attack on Israel, which is highly unlikely given that Iran most likely wants the nuclear weapons to serve as a deterrent to Israeli-American attacks and cement its regional power. Rather, it is

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shows the peace sign at the UN General Assembly meeting on the rule of law.

Source: Washington Post

the fear of what would happen to those weapons should the Islamic Republic of Iran ever collapse.

To try and bring Iran to the negotiation table, America and its allies have imposed heavy economic sanctions. In October of 2012 Iran’s currency, the rial, depreciated in value by 40% in one week. The fall in the country’s currency has driven up the price of many staple goods and has hardened Iran’s government against the US. Iran’s President, Ahmadinejad declared Iran was in a “psychological war” with the United States.

In a non-violent effort to halt Iran’s nuclear program, Israel and America launched the Stuxnet virus in 2009.

The computer worm wiped out 1,000 of the 5,000 centrifuges Iran was using to enrich Uranium, delaying Iran’s nuclear ambitions and buying time for negotiations. In May 2012, another virus, designated Flame, was found in high-ranking Iranian officials’ computers collecting secret information across a wide variety of sources. In turn, Iran has been accused of launching cyberattacks crippling computers across the

Saudi oil fields and financial institutions of the US. While a shadow war of viral attacks is underway between the US and Iran, Israel and Iran engage in a much more lethal version. Five Israeli tourists were killed in a bombing outside of Burgas, a magnetic bomb detonated in a diplomatic car in New Delhi, and a cache of explosives found in a Kenyan golf course are just a handful of countless examples of mini-plots undertaken by Iran and Hezbollah against Israel.

But in all this discourse, is there any hope for reconciliation between the two countries in the coming decades? America’s firm Israeli and Saudi alliance will always be a stumbling block in Iranian-American relations. Though the theocracy is not the sole reason why America and Iran are currently diametrically-opposed, if it were to fall to democratic pressures in the coming years, a new page in USIranian relations might be turned— one which is not hostile and in which the US is not puppeteering behind the scenes. In other words, a fresh start. •

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INTERNATIONAL

How Japan Stopped Growing and Learned to Love Decline

BY ALEX HEYN, International Editor

made the number of national debt 200% the amount of GDP. During the n Back to the Future 2, Everyboy lost decade, Japan experienced littleMarty McFly time-travels to the to-no growth as it saw its national jewyear 2015 and catches a glimpse els such as Toyota and Sony maintain of what in 1985 must have seemed steady profits, and the government like pure science fiction. Commercials borrowed heavily from mostly itself to targeted individual viewers, cameras fill in the gaps. This created a bubble captured our every move, and Asia which protected Japan from the worst reigned supreme. But while the film of global market fluctuations even as paints Japan as the empire on the rise, it slowed national growth to a crawl. as befitted economic predictions in the The South China Sea territorial 80s, modern analysis tells a very dif- disputes have done little to improve ferent story. The close ties between matters. As Sino-Japanese relations business and government and focus continue to sour, Japan’s vital trading on export-manufacturing that served relations with China dry up, and offer the Japanese economy so well thirty up a rather unfavorable comparison beyears ago has since led to a “lost de- tween the neighboring but diametricalcade” of growth and made the world’s ly-opposed nations. Where Japan, the third-largest economy a source of in- export-heavy nation, was once lauded ternational concern. Add to this an on- successor to the global throne, China, going territorial dispute with with its cheap labor force and China, a revolving door of large market presence, now “The world’s dominates the discussion. prime ministers, an unstable rising national debt, and a Like Western Europe, as third largest rapidly-aging population, the baby-boomer generation econmy a and Japan seems as far from ages, Japan faces a severe source of its former glory as can be. demographic crisis stemPart of Japan’s problem international ming from a low fertility lies in its institutional dysrate and growing life span. concern.” function. The labyrinthian In brief, more Japanese are risk-averse bureaucracy aging than are being born. seeks to maintain as much of the sta- This puts an unhealthy strain on weltus quo as possible. By protecting ex- fare and prevents much-needed inisting industries, the current system dustry growth, as politicians attempt makes it nearly impossible for compe- to pander to the growing number of tition from new industries, and thus retirees looking for security rather positive economic change, to occur. than the shrinking number of young Japan’s famously insular nature now people open to change and flexibility. threatens to be its downfall. Through Labor market reform, including ben95% domestic ownership of national efits for new and part time hires, and debt, the country is strangely isolated an unprecedented push for immigrafrom the world market and protected tion reform can together relieve at least from foreign investors, but has also to some extent the serious crisis Japan

I

is facing by promoting new industry and population growth. Perhaps most importantly, however, embracing foreign investment and the call of globalization may be the key to a Japanese economic recovery. By loosening the restrictions on foreign companies, Japan could simultaneously stimulate market growth and alleviate its debt crisis.

For any change to occur, however, Japan needs a strong political leader.

With an election just around the corner, as of this writing, several parties bicker for dominance with no clear vision or winner in sight. Naoto Kan, the former Japanese Prime Minister, pushed for state-welfare and new-industry-centered reforms, but resigned after public outcry over the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Japan has seen seven Prime Ministers come and go in six years, which marks the country’s struggle to deal with its national crisis even as it prevents any real, lasting change from taking place. Japan’s economy is festering, and its people seem to simultaneously recognize the need for change but reject attempts for reform. The effort to reconcile the country’s historically rather isolationist policies and the demands of an increasingly globalized economy seems an uphill battle.

Where once its place at the top of the global food chain was all but secured, Japan now must look over its shoulder at the specter of younger, sleeker China, and address the issues of a lost and disappearing population and a seemingly-incompetent political body. Under the weight of a struggling economy and ailing population, it is as of yet unclear whether this is Japan’s last breath or merely a brief respite before flaring back to life. •

The media photographs a wall of election posters. Source: The Telegraph

INTERNATIONAL

winter 2013

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Department of Defense employees operating in cyberspace.

Source: Wired Magazine

Science Fiction or Eminent Reality?

How We’re Preparing for Battle

BY ADEEBA HASAN, Staff Writer

I

magine a war, one not initiated with a bomb, a tank or a gun but with a computer virus, worm or Trojan, needing only to be planted into one device to spread throughout a whole technological system like a parasite. Within minutes, a strike would leave phone lines dead, power generators damaged, airplanes grounded and gas pipelines exploding—effectively forcing us back to the Stone Age. Our own smartphones and even home appliances supply our enemies with the information they use to concoct their battle strategies, and our unmanned weaponry is used to harm our own.

This is the future of war: cyber-war.

For now, there have only been mere glimpses of this future. Currently the battlefield is more reflective of that of a second Cold War than a third World War, with sides quietly building up their arsenal. For the most part, combatants have hitherto been driven by small political and financial gains, such as in 2010 when the Chinese government hacked into Google’s Gmail accounts searching for pro-Tibetan emails.

That is not to say, however, that disputes have been limited to mere sabotage. In September 2001, Israel used their cyber-intelligence to disable Syrian defense systems, leaving them susceptible when Israel bombed a suspected nuclear site. In August 2008, the Russians disrupted the Republic of Georgia’s governmental communications to interrupt its defense during the war. Moreover, since 2010 the number of cyber-attacks between iran and the US and its allies has increased. When the “Stuxnet” and “Flame” computer worms concocted by American and Israeli intelligence acted to derail Iran’s

nuclear program, Iran fought back with the “Shamoon” virus infecting 30,000 of the Saudi oil company Aramco’s computers, projecting a burning American flag before damaging them beyond repair.

The growing role of technology in society is only making the fight easier. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) controllers are responsible for multiple jobs previously managed by humans. Currently, these controllers manage jobs from the opening of pipelines to the monitoring of traffic signals and their roles are only growing, even into the domains of home and domestic life. Yet, the system has certain weaknesses in terms of ease of access of information due to its use of cyberspace and faults in designs created by engineers rather than programmers. These two weaknesses coupled with society’s general movement of managerial jobs to cyberspace may indicate that infiltration into one part of one system would be catastrophic.

Yet what would this mean for the future? Wars would be more crippling than ever, especially if cyber-attacks are used in conjunction with traditional kinetic attacks. Perpetrators would be difficult to identify and persecute due to the Attribution Problem in which hackers are difficult to trace due to remote computer access. Moreover many governments may move to favor censorship, as it makes monitoring illegal cyber activity easier. Yet perhaps one of the most shocking changes in war could be a reversal of power. While poor and militarily ill-equipped nations might once have been seen as weak in terms of defense, in the future their citizens’ lack of internet-dependence relative to that of larger, more militarily-equipped nations would leave them

less susceptible to this difference in military might.

For now a cyber war may not be an eminent threat, yet it seems unnerving that the likely future contains one.

While corporations are looking to hire Information Technology specialists trained in cyber security, at the Pentagon cyber has joined land, sea and air as a domain of operations. After all, one day our smartphones could be used as an incubator for a virus, inadvertently transmitted through a friend. Our power sources and transportation could be manipulated by a college student on a laptop. The terror of planes, tanks and drones could be less than that of the arsenal of cyberspace. So maybe it’s not what you see that you should fear, but what you don’t. •

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INTERNATIONAL

The Severe Consequences of an Unlikely Problem

BY HA DUONG, Staff Writer

T

he world’s current population is estimated to be around 7 billion, and rapidly increasing at a rate of about 200,000 people per day.

However, what seems like a simple issue of increasing birth rates is much more complex. While overpopulation itself is not inherently “bad,” like many modern development issues, overpopulation is deeply embedded within a set of compounding, complex problems aggravated by geographic inequalities that make the issue dangerous as a result of the deathly aftermaths it provokes. In this global moment of accelerated growth, proper population management is necessary to mitigate the its problems.

At its root, overpopulation stems from declining death and birth rates, thanks to improved access to health care and industrialization. Despite this overall growth, to say this rapid growth occurs uniformly across the globe would be inaccurate. Growth rates are geographically disproportionate—in high-income countries, population growth rates have actually declined. Still, this much larger population base continues to increase the global population immensely.

Of course, the negative impact of this unnatural human population size is no secret; the effects of this growth strains the earth’s natural resources as humans continue to consume more than is sustainable. And yet environmental and food security issues are just a small portion of the concerns of population growth. In poorer, more unstable countries that exist under dire sociopolitical situations without the proper infrastructure to deal with them, rapid population growth only serves to exacerbate their problems.

Poverty, conflict, and human rights abuses become pervasive as governments fail to develop proper methods to deal with the effects of rapid growth within their fragile, growing economies.

As countries develop, urbanization is nearly inevitable as economic growth concentrates in cities. This becomes problematic for both rural and urban areas as economic inequality widens between the regions. For obvious reasons, rural areas become impoverished. But when large populations rush to cities in an attempt to overcome the economic disparities, overcrowded slums and informal settlements exist as one of the more visible symbols of unmanaged, burgeoning populations.

However, urban areas lack the re-

A young boy and soldier at the Syrian protests..

Source: Ahmad Gharabli - AFP/Getty Images

sources to sustain these new migrant populations, leading to both housing shortages and high unemployment. Together, these two problems create the perfect formula for widespread poverty.

Furthermore, the populations that exist in between this urban-rural duality are affected as well—in countries like China and Vietnam, millions struggle to survive, and as a result, choose to exist as a “floating population,” where they migrate back and forth between urban centers and rural areas for work in different seasons.

While floating populations are responsible for a significant portion of these countries’ urban growth, and while economically beneficial, the floating populations have also supported the persistence of this rural-urban socioeconomic divide as the countries grows. Additionally, due to the countries’ use of urban citizenship, these populations often lack basic social services, as residential status is required.

Such poverty and socioeconomic inequality often breeds discontent. According to the L.A. Times, about 80% of the world’s civil conflicts since the 1970s were involved in countries with fast-growing, young populations. This pattern is no coincidence—as youth populations find themselves frustrated by their desperate, unchangeable conditions, they take matters into their own hands. A notable example is the Arab Spring, which happened largely due to the social friction that overpopulation instigated, where the

corrupt government was overturned as it failed to create the proper environment for economic opportunity.

However, the social tension developed by the growing pains of overpopulation does not always end in such revolution. Poverty leads people to seek alternatives in desperation. In countries like Afghanistan, some join the Taliban, largely due to the greater economic benefits. Oftentimes, dangerous alternatives provide the most security, despite the greater consequences for the larger society. The drastic situations that are brought by these new population dynamics do not end here—human rights abuses run rampant on groups as they attempt to deal with the changing conditions caused by the rapid growth in population.

Overpopulation is one of the many factors that push people to their limit— children are sold off by their parents and families disintegrate, the impoverished are trafficked, and vulnerable populations are attacked.In some countries, witch hunts are carried out against elderly women, who are sometimes blamed for uncontrollable occurrences caused by population growth such as climate change. Gender-based violence is a normal occurrence in fragile regions where girls are pressured into marriage or giving birth, feeding into the disastrous cycle of population growth. (continued on pg 18)

INTERNATIONAL

winter 2013

19

The Newest Threat to Afghan Stability

BY RYAN HANG, Staff Writer

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army may not be prepared to secure Afghanistan after ISAF soldiers withdraw in 2014. Second, green-on-blue attacks only create more resentment and have inflamed tensions between the Afghan Army and the ISAF. ISAF soldiers in response to these attacks have now implemented a “guardian angel” strat-

been infiltrated by the Taliban. While this is a plausible theory, the top ISAF commander in the Afghanistan predicts that Taliban infiltration might be at the cause of only 25% of attacks and that the rest of the attacks are triggered by cultural resentment. The finally theory to the cause of Insider attacks has been proposed by president Karzai, he attributes insider attacks to foreign intelligence agencies from possibly Iran or Pakistan whom are trying to de-stabilize Afghanistan.

However, there is not much evidence which supports the idea that foreign intelligence agencies are at the cause of green-on-blue attacks.

To effectively combat green-on-blue attacks, the ISAF must actively improve its cultural relations and be more attentive towards cultural sensitivities if they want to stop attacks. Secondly, the Afghan National Army must improve its historically poor troop vetting process to counter Taliban infiltration.

Greater incentives for service and a higher quality of recruits may independently solve green-on-blue attacks. Finally, the “guardian angel” strategy that the US is employing right now is necessary to provide a sufficient deterrence for future attacks, but should be enacted with greater caution to prevent the further deterioration of trust between the Afghan National Army and the ISAF. If the ISAF fails to adequately respond to green-on-blue attacks, the more than a decade long occupation of Afghanistan may fail to enact any long lasting change. These insider attacks from Afghan National Army soldiers themselves are a troubling indication that the ISAF needs to re-evaluate its counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan and its entire approach to counter insurgency operations in the future.•

government services such as family planning and health centers, not only improving the entire population’s living conditions, but also the role of women in their traditionally conservative society. However, this solution is no cure-all—in China, population growth remains a serious issue despite its implementation of the “one-child policy” for the past three decades.

While rapid population growth is a serious issue, it is not without solutions. Governments and institutions, however, need to implement innovative strategies to ensure that people main-

tain their rights despite the straining effects of population growth and effectively combat the marginalizing impulses, dislocation, conflict, and violence that comes with the pressures of such growth dynamics.

Although the effects of rapid popula tion growth are often discrete, they are deeply embedded in many of our broader social issues, such as poverty and human rights. In this paradoxical moment of growth, the consideration of population growth is necessary in order to not lose sight of humanitarian goals in the process of development. •

ust as the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) finalizes its withdrawal strategy and transitions security responsibilities to the Afghan National Army, a new battlefield development threatens to derail NATO’s operations and Afghanistan’s future stability.

Green-on-blue attacks, in which Afghan security forces turn their guns on their ISAF allies have undermined trust between Afghan and US soldiers. The recent explosion of these attacks has halted a significant portion of ISAF and Afghan National Army cooperative operations in Afghanistan. Without cooperation with ISAF forces, the Afghan National Army may not be adequately prepared to stabilize Afghanistan after the ISAF withdrawal in 2014. An ISAF solider on patrol with the Afghan National Army.

The first recorded green-on- Credit: Atlantic Wire blue attack was in 2007, and now these insider attacks attack account for 15% of American casual- egy, in which ISAF soldiers are armed ties in Afghanistan. However, green-on- around the clock and are assigned to blue attacks are a recent phenomenon watch over fellow soldiers and guard and have never materialized in any pre- against green-on-blue attacks. This vious counter insurgency operation in only leads to a vicious cycle as greatthe past. While there have been plenty er resentment leads to more attacks.

In order to implement a strategy for of incidents of infiltration, indigenous counter insurgency forces turning their stopping green-on-blue attacks, the guns on their allies have not occurred. ISAF must discover the cause of atThe implications of green-on blue tacks. The leading theory for the cause attacks are severe. First, they threaten of insider attacks is cultural incompatthe current counter insurgency strat- ibility with ISAF soldiers. According to egy in Afghanistan. Under the threat of reports and surveys, and overwhelmmore green-on-blue attacks ISAF com- ing majority of Afghan soldiers express manders have halted most joint train- anger and frustration with ISAF forces. ing and combat operations among ISAF They account that ISAF forces fire on and Afghan National Army soldiers. civilian, mistreat women, utilize proThis is particularly harmful to the fu- fanity against them, and perform invature stability of Afghanistan because sive strip searches. Cultural tensions without proper training and experience could have boiled over and triggered with ISAF forces, the Afghan national green-on-blue attacks. The second theory is the Afghan National Army has (continued from pg 19) Population growth can neither be completely avoided nor left unfettered; in order to mitigate the consequences of population growth, governments need to seriously take its effects into consideration when developing policy in planning and law.

Currently, family-planning is seen as a dominant strategy for improving the conditions brought on by population growth. Some countries such as Iran have been successful in curbing population growth through mandated

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INTERNATIONAL

Educations LEFT BEHIND A Look at China and Chile

BY KEITH KUK, Staff Writer

I

n California, the pendulum of fiscal policy has swung back to the left when Proposition 30 was passed in California. In most developing nations, however, things have stayed firmly at the right for decades. Higher education systems in China and Chile, for instance, suggest the effect of education on jobs and national economic development.

Home to the largest higher education system in Asia, China has granted a higher degree of autonomy and freedom to its universities since the leadership of reformist Deng Xiaoping in 1980s. Universities have become more privatized and have started to seek wider sources of income aside from the state subsidy. Between 1993 and 2005, government spending in higher education was cut in half. In addition to this privatization, most student now must pay part of their tuition.

With a rapid growth in tertiary population due to ongoing urbanization, the number of college students in China increased by 35 percent between 2005 and 2010. Seeing the needs for financial assistance, the Chinese Ministry of Education has implemented a financial aid system composed of grants, scholarships, work-study programs, tuition waivers (though rare) and student loan programs. Even though there are loopholes in the system that give students with higher income an easier access to higher education, China’s education system

has managed to prepare its population for the economic transformation.

Despite the signs of progress, China’s enrollment ratio remains low due to the state’s huge population. Yet, the facts and figures of China’s higher education provide us a glance of the state’s transition from agriculture and rural settlement to industry and urbanization. The new leaders of the Chinese Communist Party are facing the challenge of the country’s cooling economic boom. The recession of Beijing and Shanghai gives way to the boom of second-tier industrial cities like Chongqing and Wuhan. It is predictable that an increasing number of college graduates will reside in these inland cities.

In Chile, the government has for decades removed higher education from its major part of state spending. Researches have found that only 15% of Chile’s universities funding comes from government subsidy. According to a report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Chile’s enrolled population has increased since 2000, but government subsidy remains the same. That said, the subsidy for each student keeps declining every year.

Since most of the funding for Chile’s higher education comes from the private sector, many profit-motivated universities are left unregulated. They are given the autonomy to seek funding from any sources, making students vulnerable to a continuous raise of tuition.

In 2011, this triggered an 8-month protest against the state’s budget.

Job seekers in Shaanxi Province lining up for job opportunities.

Source: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters

The privatization is part of the ongoing process of economic reform in Chile following the suicide of President Salvador Allende in 1973. Allende’s successor, General Augusto Pinochet, abandoned the state’s leftist fiscal policy and launched a series of neoliberal reforms, and education is not exempted from the Chilean government’s cut in state spending. Of many immediate consequences, the most devastating one to Chilean young people was the severe unemployment.

The picture of Chile resembles that of California’s budget cuts, in which students were paying more and more for public higher education. Under the recent jobless recovery, jobs are not guaranteed to students even they had paid for their costly college education. There are not enough high-paying opportunities available to college graduates, and these degree holders are often not welcome by employers of low-skilled jobs. They become dependent on unemployment insurance provided by the government. From the perspective of economic growth, such circumstance is far from healthy.

The juxtaposition of higher education in China and Chile is well worth our attention. In the discussion on fiscal policy, Chile, the “laboratory of neoliberalism,” is a case that conservatives should bear in mind. Conversely, the story of China reminds us of the simple fact that however much governments spend on supporting higher education, the priority should be placing graduates into the labor market. •

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An Egyptian Clash Over President Morsi’s New Edicts

Tens of thousands have gathered in Tahrir Square over the issue of Morsi's edicts the last few days. Source: Gianluigi Guercia

BY ADA LIN Staff Writer

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n the wake of the Arab Spring, a question has repeatedly come up of whether or not these revolutions have been worth it. As open conflict rages on in Syria, and Egypt struggles to keep its democratic ideals alive in the face of a religious majority, it is a question that is well-worth considering. As a conservative Islamic influence grows in the institutions of Egypt, America has to come to terms with the limits of its own power in interfering in the domestic affairs of other countries, especially as it tries to maintain peaceful international relations.

On Thursday, November 22, a day after the successful brokering of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, President Mohamed Morsi broadcasted his new edicts, calling for the retrial of many accused of killings during the Egyptian revolution, as well as exempting his decrees from judicial review.

These new edicts give Morsi legal immunity and almost absolute power, at least until a new constitution is ratified. Others fear it will continue long after the ratification, quick to condemn him as a new autocratic pharaoh.

Those that don’t accuse him of launching a “constitutional coup” accuse him of protecting the Constitutional Assembly which had been chosen last year to draft a new constitution.

Like the Constitutional Assembly before it, and the Parliament before that, all three bodies had a large Islamist influence. Both of its predecessors had

been dissolved by Egypt’s mostly secularist high courts, with many judges being appointed by ex-President Hosni Mubarak. A ruling next Sunday by the Supreme Constitutional Court was supposed to dissolve the current Constitutional Assembly. This has pleased many, as more and more groups have withdrawn from its discussion, accusing the ultra-conservative Islamists of taking over the process.

The Egyptians Journalists Syndicate’s withdrawal on Tuesday, November 20, followed that of the Coptic Christian Church’s, both condemning the assembly for its participation in “violations of freedom of expression” during the process of drafting the constitution, as well as its disregard for freedom of the press. Women’s rights groups also condemned the assembly, arguing that it was attempting to roll-back many of the gains made during the years leading up the revolution, from economic rights to age of marriage.

However, if Mr. Morsi’s edicts stand, this Constitutional Assembly will not only survive, it will also get an additional two months to finish its work, meaning the drafting process could continue until February. The constitution must then be approved by popular referendum. By preventing this assembly from being dissolved, Mr. Morsi said he is avoiding the formation of yet another assembly—a move that has been used before, his supporters say, to obstruct the path to a constitutional democracy because his opponents cannot accept their electoral defeat, where Mr. Morsi

won the popular vote at 52%, and Islamists heavily dominated.

In response, Egyptian judges have called for a judges’ strike. During the strike call, chief prosecutor Abdel Meguid Mahmoud declared that he rejected Mr. Morsi’s attempt to fire him, calling the presidential decree “null and void,” and warning of a “systematic campaign against the country’s institutions in general and the judiciary in particular.” Nationwide protests also started in the streets on Friday, November 23 and continued Saturday, with tens of thousands of people rallying and sparking violence in several cities that left a couple hundred wounded.

Rallies held by the Muslim Brotherhood and other supporters of Mr. Morsi have been consistently bigger than rallies called by secular groups perhaps due to the fact that they are chronically divided. They consist of new liberal political parties, revolutionary youths, and figures from the Mubarak era, all of whom have reason to distrust each other. The judiciary is a particularly polarizing issue, as it includes many Mubarak appointees criticized as being too close to the old regime, such as Abdel Meguid Mahmoud.

The US has been quick to criticize Mr. Morsi’s move, even though there had been international praise for his diplomatic role in the ceasefire in the Gaza strip only days before. In today’s political climate, we can only wait and witness the rebuilding that comes after the people’s revolution, a process which must come directly from the people. •

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How Feminism Became the New F word and How to Fix It

BY VIVEKA JAGADEESAN, Staff Writer

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hen asked, a dismal 29% of American women would describe themselves as feminists. There are a number of potential causes for this. First, feminism is rather unfashionable with the younger set.

It seems to many rather like Aqua Net or the typewriter— an unnecessary relic of 80s.

This is partly because critics have successfully managed to characterize feminism as the domain of the unattractive and hairy-legged to mainstream Americans. Unwilling to contend with these stereotypes, many young women will quip “I’m not a feminist but…” What usually follows is an avowal of feminist thought—after all, most young women (and men) believe that women should have same rights and opportunities available to men.

They are just not comfortable with the idea of burning their bras for those rights.

But the more nefarious reason for passing on feminism is that it simply seems unnecessary. Women can now vote, buy property—and lap dances; indeed, women seem to be able to do anything men can. In Female Chauvinist Pigs, a criticism of the increased pornification of mainstream society, Ariel Levy argues that women have become willing participants in the objectification of other women—consuming Playboy and visiting strip clubs to prove that now, they too can be “one of the guys”.

But the gaining freedom to be a man is hardly cause for a feminist victory dance.

The self-objectification that today’s women are sold as an expression of sexuality is a giant step back. Even as women are outwardly freer to express their sexuality, they are increasingly constrained in the terms by which they experience that sexuality. Because

the normalization of pornographic culture has lead to a media saturated with semi-naked images of women, women increasingly conflate their experience of feeling sexual with appearing sexually appealing to men (Levy).

Source: American Apparel

It is certainly a victory that women are freer now to dress (or not dress) exactly as they choose than at any time in recent memory. However, the protection of freedom to flash doesn’t seem to correlate with the safety of other free-

doms. Access to abortions and contraception are increasingly threatened in modern America. Women earn 81% of a man’s income at the same job and make up an increasing share of the nation’s poor. The backlash is psychological as much as it is economic—the percentage of Americans who believe that women and men are equally suited to politics is lower than it was a decade ago. The trend illustrated by these statistics brings to question whether the freedoms granted by today’s culture are really freedoms at all.

Women who willingly undergo genital mutilation, as is prevalent in certain parts of Africa and the Middle East, are seen as indoctrinated and under the control of patriarchal power structures. The practice is seen as a rite of passage and an essential component of femininity in the regions in which it occurs. In Professor Laura Nader’s analysis, the choices of American women to undergo breast enhancements are equally suspect.

Though sold under the label of female empowerment, these surgeries are as much the product of “controlling processes,” which promote culturally specific ideas of femininity, as the clitoridectomies and infibulations practiced in other countries.

It has become clear that feminism is not about achieving parity with men, legally or in terms of economic benchmarks—though those goals are still relevant and important globally. Women still need feminism—but to stay relevant to today’s women, it needs to address the cultural assault on a multidimensional female sexuality and disturbing acceptance of a return to retrograde sexism. This will mean developing a conception of female power defined by more than women’s relation to men. •

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Reproductive Rights in the U.S.

BY MANDY HONEYCHURCH, Staff Writer

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his election has placed the debate on reproductive rights in a new light. From U.S. Rep. Todd Akin’s remarks on what constitutes a “legitimate rape” to Richard Mourdock’s now-infamous quote, “even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen,” national discussion on abortion rights has transitioned from focusing on pro-life or pro-choice policies to whether rape is a legitimate reason to have an abortion.

This turned out to be a treacherous path for Republicans to lead the abortion debate down, as both candidates received an enormous backlash for their comments and subsequently lost their Senate races.

The goal of efforts to redefine rape was an attempt to affect the access and availability of contraception, which continues to be an issue of contention outside extreme campaign speeches.

The Affordable Care Act, specifically its requirements that employers provide birth control in their insurance plans, has faced huge opposition from Republican candidates who support religious exemptions. During his campaign, Mitt Romney vowed to fight against Obama’s healthcare plan. Though Obama’s victory may come as a relief to liberal voters, that does not mean his health care plan is safe. Obama’s victory may serve to further unite religious voters against his health care reform, specifically concerning reproductive health care.

A resurgence in conservative views on health care policy could come into play in future elections.

The importance of the president in determining the outcome of this issue cannot be denied. Perhaps most importantly, the current president of the U.S. will likely determine at least one and possibly more new Supreme Court

nominations. The current Supreme Court is aging quickly and the oldest, Ruth Bader Ginsberg is arguably the most progressive, leading to the question of

Source: “Rights of Women”

whether Obama would replace her with a justice as progressive. Given that four of the nine justices are in their seventies, whoever the president nominates could have a significant impact on the ideological leanings of the Court, which often splits its vote 5-4 along ideological lines. The Court’s conservative judges are on the younger side, so future nominations will determine whether they will be balanced by more progressive judges or move to the more socially conservative side of the ideological spectrum. If Roe v. Wade were overturned that could either result in a federal ban on abortion or the issue could go to the states.

Not all pro-life politicians advocate for banning abortion at a federal level.

Many politicians, including John McCain and Mitt Romney, instead advocate for the argument of “letting the states decide.” But what would really happen if access to health care was determined at a state-wide level? It would

likely be bad news for women seeking reproductive health care in much of the nation.

If it was left up to the states, women’s right to abortion would be put in jeopardy in many states. According to a recent report on women’s reproductive rights in the U.S., 17 states, including Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, currently have neartotal bans on abortion or criminal bans in their laws, which could go into effect if Roe v. Wade is overturned. The bans are not currently in effect because they are unconstitutional. Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, and South Dakota have “trigger bans” set in place which would immediately criminalize abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Numerous states also have legislatures and governors that are predominantly anti-choice who would likely outlaw abortion if given the chance.

If these bans were to go into effect, millions of women would lose access to safe, legal abortions, putting lives at risk.

While reproductive rights advocates can consider the right to abortion “safe” for now, at least at the national level, the future might not be so hopeful. Future elections could swing the other way, putting reproductive rights in harm’s way once more. And just because a pro-choice president sits in office does not mean that states will not continue to put various restrictions on access to abortions like parental notification laws, waiting periods, and requirements to inform women o f suicide risks r elated to receiving an abortion.

During the past two years, thirtytwo states have adopted some type of restriction on abortion. Recent years have also seen increases in statewide abortion restrictions. In 2011, legislators across the country introduced more than 1,100 provisions concerning reproductive health and rights, 68% of which restrict access to abortion.

The right to abortion may be safe at the federal level, but that will not stop states from continuing to slowly decrease access to them. •

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NATIONAL

The Global Spread of Armed Drones

ssessing the spread of drone technology, P.W. Singer of the Brookings Institution says, “I think of where the airplane was at the start of World War I: at first it was unarmed and limited to a handful of countries. Then it was armed and everywhere. That is the path we’re on.”

Currently, only the United States, Great Britain, and Israel are known to have used armed drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicle systems, for targeted assassination. However, many more countries, including Germany, Poland, Canada, Turkey, China, Iran, and most recently Pakistan, are pursuing armed drone technology or have expressed a desire to do so.

The proliferation of armed drones is imminent. The military incentives driving this proliferation are obvious; drones allow for the swift elimination

of one’s enemies without the visibility or political resistance associated with a traditional invasion.

There are also economic factors at work. Unlike other watershed military developments, such as nuclear weapons, drone technology is primarily developed and sold by private companies.

The flow of designs is not restricted by secrecy and diplomacy, but simply by the ability to pay. The drone industry also propagates itself by using profits for politics, as evidenced by the 60-member Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus, which advocates for increased purchases of the technology and is fueled by millions in campaign contributions.

As drone campaigns become ubiquitous, their effects will be felt most in poor countries. Politically weak and unable to afford resistive military technology, these nations will leave their

Countries possessing drone technology Source: US Government Accountability Office

citizens exposed to the casualties and infrastructural damage associated with perpetual campaigns of wealthy nations.

Wealthy nations will not be spared either. The political ease of drone use encourages infinite, perpetual war.

Drone use also deadens our feelings toward death by reducing its visibility.

Taken together, these effects create a self-sustaining cycle that increasingly puts military solutions before diplomatic ones, portending ever-more involvement abroad.

The essential U.S. monopoly on armed drones will end very soon. President Obama should take the long view and reassess drone use in his second term, as he will be finishing off the groundwork for a new global order likely to remain with us for many years to come. •

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Could Taking a Lesson from Germany Revitalize the American Workforce and Economy?

BY ANNA BELLA KORBATOV, Staff Writer

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our years after the 2008 financial crisis, America is still experiencing the effects of the Great Recession, with 23 million Americans unemployed. A decade of stagnant median household income, rising income inequality, and the decline of the American manufacturing sector amidst growing globalization and an information revolution have signaled a profound structural change in the American economy. What the recession has put into sharp focus, however, is the fact that the American educational system also needs reform—it is simply not meeting the needs of an increasingly globalized economy. Surprisingly, Germany might offer some unique solutions to reforming America’s educational system in the form of apprenticeship programs.

With millions of college graduates underemployed and many working in low-skill, minimum wage jobs, college debt seems like the next bubble ready to explode. The recession has challenged the sacrosanct notion that higher education is an investment that always pays off. Part of the problem is that there has been inadequate investment in training for high-skilled, blue collar jobs- jobs that don’t necessarily require a traditional four-year college education. Fareed Zakaria, one of the first to bring attention to the skills gap, agrees: “Here in the U.S., our patchwork system of job training programs is why we have 3.5 million job openings left unfilled.”

Looking abroad for successful models of job training programs and educational initiatives has led many to Germany. Germany’s apprenticeship program has been credited with keeping youth unemployment low- at about 8%, half the US rate- and it might offer US policymakers some guidance in education reform. Germany, the economic stalwart of the EU during the Great Recession, has seen unemployment spike to 6.9% in October despite retaining a very strong manufacturing sector.

A productive manufacturing sector has fueled the German economic engine in the past decade by keeping unemployment low and GDP rising, and apprenticeship programs have played an integral role in that success.

Germany offers its youth not headed for university a two or three-year ap-

prenticeship while they are still in high school. After completing their high school education, young people can apply to private companies for training programs. Companies offer those accepted into the program vocational and/or technical training; trainees alternate their time between hands-on work and publically-funded vocational training in a classroom environment.

Graduates of the apprenticeship program receive a certificate and are also credentialed to work in a field similar to that of their training. Some also graduate with a degree in their field. The ingenuity of Germany’s apprenticeship program is the assurance of automatic job placement; trainees accepted into the program are automatically ensured a job once the apprenticeship is over, and built-in flexibility if they must switch to another profession or company.

Implementing a German-style apprenticeship model overseas presents serious challenges. Skeptics doubt that a full-fledged German-style apprenticeship program could ever succeed in the US; the prestige of a four-year university education, the cost of publically funding vocational schools, and the reluctance of American companies to invest in technical and vocational training for workers are powerful obstacles.

The apprenticeship model has been tried in the U.K., but has largely failed to replicate Germany’s success because applicants lack basic skills and “work readiness,” underscoring the primacy of effective primary and secondary education. However, the lesson that American policymakers could take from the German model is the importance of investment in skills-training, namely funding vocational training and partnering with community colleges to offer such programs. The public-private

partnership aspect of apprenticeship programs is one element of the German model that will likely be most popular with American policymakers.

With college debt rising and youth unemployment at 17%, college graduates heading out into the workforce face an uncertain future, and an average of $27,000 in loan debt. The concern is palpable, even at the highest levels of leadership: “We need to address the issue of skills, because now we’re more interested in degrees than in credentials…since 2009 we have had a growing number of four-year college graduates unable to get sound wages in their areas of study,” said Assistant U.S. Secretary of Labor Jane Oates in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek in July 2012. Granted, apprenticeship programs are the progeny of universalist welfare states, with fairly homogenous populations and a political culture more predisposed to democratic socialism. The apprenticeship model cannot be wholly applied to the United States, but elements of it can serve as guideposts for possible reforms. Proposals to reform education offer more complex and unconventional solutions to high unemployment and economic stagnation than traditional tax and spend policies. Apprenticeship programs have the potential to help our economy, especially the American workforce, better adapt to globalization by addressing the demand for highskill, blue-collar jobs. Education reform is poised to play a key role in America’s economic recovery if policymakers seize the opportunity to modernize our educational system to better meet the demands of a globalized world. • Source: ThisisMoney.co.uk

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Changes in Campaign Technology and Their Impacts

BY DISHA BANIK, Staff Writer

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tep inside a political campaign office and you will see stacks of paper maps, boxes of clipboards, binders of voter contact lists, piles of carpool sheets, and rows of computers for field data entry.

Canvassers in 2012 are still shuffling through paper maps as they walk down the street. Field organizers are still transferring “Not Home” from the tally sheet to the computer screen. Due to miscounts and data mismanagement, campaigns waste resources and reach out to certain voters repeatedly.

The current process consumes forests worth of paper and is far from environmentally friendly. Canvassing—knocking on houses, conversing face to face with potential voters, and building personal connections—is unlikely to cease to be a valid election strategy. However, in 10 years, the way in which campaigns prepare for voter contact and whom they contact will change.

The assimilation of smartphones into campaign technology will revolutionize campaign strategy and efficiency. Mobile canvassing applications, like Grassroots Unwired, Organizer, and MiniVan Touch, replace clipboards and allow canvassers and phone bankers to record, collect and share field data while knocking or calling.

Such mobile applications eliminate the need for printing and assembling walk packets of neighborhood-specific maps, voter address lists, and directions to neighborhoods. They also eliminate the need for data entry staff and volunteers. Campaign staff can cut turfs and create scripts online, drag and drop workers into turfs to assign “walk packets” to individual phones, view live canvassing results, view worker location and activity on an electronic map, and filter lists to exclude and include previous survey responses.

This has many impacts. While the initial cost of purchasing smart phones and mobile applications may be high, the technology will reduce the long-term costs of paper, pens, and employee compensations for campaigns, all the while being environmentally friendly.

With weeks of printing lists, organizing packets, and entering data eliminated, the canvassing and phone banking season itself could shorten.

Technology could spur further competition between political parties. Certain companies may only sell to specific candidates and parties that share their corporate values. Organizer and NGP VAN, for instance, only sell to Democrats. Democratic candidates may incorporate campaign technology and social media faster given their party’s younger demographic composition.

Political technology companies like NGP VAN, Nation Builder, Votizen and Political Data do not focus on mobile technology, but rather, manage voter data and social media analytics. Increased voter data management efficiency and statistical analysis capabilities could result in either more or less contact from political offices, depending on the voter. Presidential campaigns will increasingly micro-target the electorate, identifying and only reaching out to specific streets and neighborhoods within swing states, while largely ignoring the rest of the electorate. While this may result in fewer calls or knocks if you are a solid supporter of a candidate, this may also reduce candidates’ sense of responsibility to campaign to the whole electorate.

Furthermore, in monitoring the electorate’s visual and social media consumption, campaigns will know more about their electorate than they did be-

fore, in addition to what they already know—name, phone number, age, gender, address and party. It would also be safe to assume the rise of hashtag wars given that Obama and Romney spent more on social media than ever in the history of elections. While Roosevelt was the first president to capitalize television and radio for public relations, Obama in 2008 was the first president to truly propel social media and web strategy, although Howard Dean utilized Meetup.com to become a contender for his party’s nomination in 2004. Obama outspent Romney on social media by four times in the 2012 election and on November 7th, President Obama had the most popular Tweet of all time. Obama’s 20.9 million Facebook page like lead over Romney arguably did matter. His social media platform mobilized young voters in the 2012 election.

Social media output from both parties will be increasingly streamlined to specific audiences, such as youth.

Campaigns will micro-target voters not only in person and on the phone, but also online.

While radios and televisions broadened politicians’ reach in the Roosevelt era, automating digital platforms will narrow their reach in the modern era. •

Illustration by Xio Alvarez

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What to Expect for a Warming Planet

BY MATTHEW CALVERT, Staff Writer

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limate change poses a significant threat to the welfare of society and the planet. There is evidence we have already started experiencing the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2007 Ban Ki Moon, secretary general of the United Nations, attributed “violence in Darfur” in part to drought and famine induced by “man-made global warming.”

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg argued that the possibility “the increase in extreme weather” is a result of climate change “should compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.”

Why the urgency? A warming planet could trigger relatively abrupt changes that would “irreversibly change the climate system and increase” temperatures, explains Christian Traeger, professor of environmental and resource economics. If “major ice sheets in Greenland or West Antarctica melt or partially slide into the ocean,” the sea levels would rise and the earth’s surface would reflect less sunlight increasing temperatures further.

That kind of warming could have major consequences. Already the WHO estimates 250,000 people a year already die due to health problems caused by climate change. Changes in rainfall pattern could cause drought in some areas, which could threaten agricultural production, threatening famine and economic strife. Traeger points to more droughts in “the Sahel,” threatening severe consequences for a “very poor region,” and sea level rise that could mean “some island states might simply disappear,” with coastal regions in Asia in particular at risk of flooding. Extreme weather events, resource conflict, political instability and humanitarian crises could all become more common.

Richard Muller, professor of physics and founder of Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature, a comprehensive and statistically sophisticated assessment of temperature records that confirmed the consensus view that humans are driving climate change, takes issue with the way the media consistently presents “the worst case scenario.”

“I think what happens is you get a range of scientific groups getting different results, and the ones that claim the most dramatic results are the ones that make newspaper headlines,” Muller explains. Part of the problem

his complaint highlights is the difficulty of predicting what specific effects rising temperatures will trigger.

Nevertheless, the overall picture climate research paints is not pretty. As Professor Traeger argues, “uncertainty should not prevent us from acting.”

Given the evidence, what is the best course of “immediate action” we can take? Stringent policies against carbon emissions risk reducing economic growth, which could pose real consequences for human welfare, especially in developing countries. So policymakers should work to estimate the damages climate change will incur to develop a cure less harmful than the disease.

This type of assessment is trickier than it may at first seem. Economists need to develop a comprehensive quantification of the damage they expect increasing temperatures to cause.

The economic impact to each region is unique; Russia for instance may actually enjoy a better economy as ice melts making more land agriculA natural gas pipeline in China. Professor Richard Muller is working to promote natural gas as an energy source for the developing world because it is cheap and “for the same energy output produces one third to one half of the greenhouse emissions.”

Source: International Business Times, November 14th, 2011

turally viable. This assessment process is fraught with difficulty, but it suggests the overall economic consequences of climate change will be negative, no matter how the pie is sliced.

Traeger explains that balancing costs and benefits is a question of balancing the welfare of “different generations.” A successful climate policy will “incur the costs” right now and “have these benefits accrue in the far future” as successive generations enjoy a planet with less climate change.

While it seems clear ethically that a person today and a person in the future have equal rights to wellbeing, a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow simply because a dollar today can be invested in a productive project that earns interest. So money committed to reducing carbon emissions may not be committed to a startup, research and development, education, or other investments that could pay off in big ways.

Developing countries like China especially treasure the opportunity to invest today, and will be hard-pressed to limit carbon emissions. This situation poses a challenge as Professor Muller points out that “climate change in the future is expected to come about because of emissions not originating in the United States, but in China, India and the developing world.”

Muller believes it would be prohibitively expensive to “subsidize” Chinese energy and economic development, so he instead points to two solutions: “conservation efforts” and “natural gas.” Through “conservation efforts” developing countries “can use their energy more efficiently” reducing their carbon intensity of output. Next, Muller explains that “natural gas for the same energy output produces one third to one half of the greenhouse emissions.”

Of course, China in seeking to fuel its voracious growth may embrace energy efficiency, natural gas, oil, coal, wind, and any other energy source it can get a hold of as it emerges as an economic superpower. Even if we assess the could determine the future cost of emitting carbon today with a high degree of certainty, we may end up failing to address climate change as countries like China and the United States enjoy the benefits of carbon while spreading the costs globally. •

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Bipartisanship, Brinksmanship and “Passing the Buck”

Source: Peter Schrank

BY FELIX CRUZ, Staff Writer

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ith the re-election of Barack Obama as President, it can be argued that the country has taken on a more progressive attitude toward economic issues. This new mandate has given great confidence to Democrats during negotiations over reducing the deficit and averting the so-called “fiscal cliff.” One would think that negotiations might run smoother if you can claim the American people are on your side. However, Republicans demand spending cuts and yet refuse to increase taxes even on the wealthiest Americans. If the gridlock in Congress continues, the future becomes a dark place. It is consumers and investors that lose their confidence, as uncertainty over the country’s economy increases.

Since the election, Democrats have become more hardline on refusing to make cuts in spending; something that they were more willing to do just last year. Ironically, Democrats seem to be taking on the same power stance that Republicans normally have taken on taxes. In a recent article for the Associated Press, Democratic Senator Tom Harkin said, “The election spoke very strongly about the fact that the American people don’t want to cut these programs that actually really sustain the middle class in America and allow people to become part of the middle class.”

And while Democrats invoke their newly gained mandate, Republicans refusal to raise taxes (even for families earning over $250,000) demonstrates their staunch loyalty to corporations and private interests. As the two parties dig their heels deeper into their ideologies and platforms, a type of brinksmanship is created.

As time runs out before the edge of the “fiscal cliff” is reached, both parties seem less and less inclined to do something, inevitably putting more pressure on the other side to take action. This tactic of inaction to force action implicitly defines inaction as strong and action as weak. This is because the side that agrees to compromise first will be the one to concede and that is perceived as weak politically. What is created then is a brinksmanship that tries to hold out for as long as possible until the other side gives in. Therefore, ideology takes a stronger hold over political actions (or in this case inaction) and pragmatism becomes the greater of two evils, paradoxically. And if pragmatism is seen as weak, true bipartisanship becomes less of an option as well.

The refusal of either party to make the first move or budge at all makes bipartisanship difficult.

Economic growth (through maintaining a stable debt) naturally calls for bipartisanship.

It requires both stimulus and contraction in order to grow sustainably over the long run. In this way our economy

is indivisible. It demands a delicate balance between spending and cutting back. Too much of one policy (over spending or little taxation for example) hurls the economy over the edge one way or the other. It requires that both Democrats and Republicans make the difficult decisions they are too afraid to make. The problem is that when the parties stick to ideology and refuse to make concessions, the losers become the masses, everyday citizens. This brinksmanship holds the economy and those affected by it hostage—losing the confidence of investors and consumers in the economy. This loss of confidence caused by uncertainty pulls the trigger on the economy that the two parties are too afraid to pull for fear of blame.

Therefore the inaction or brinksmanship that the two political parties believe to be a display of strength is in actuality a very cowardly action. This inability to make firm, difficult choices in the present over the growing deficit only compounds the fatality of these choices in the future. The cowardice planted today is what we will inherent tomorrow. Unfortunately that has been the story regarding our growing deficit for decades. Nothing is done until time almost runs out, and then a small compromise only delays the inevitable; making it another Congress’s problem.

But our policy makers past and present all bear responsibility for the future, for inaction is still a form action. Our future depends on our leaders having the courage to make the difficult choices— Democrats reforming entitlements, Republicans raising revenue through taxes. “Passing the buck” can only work for so long. •

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

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The Future of Aging Rap Stars

BY LAILA SAMIMI, Staff Writer

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hat happens when rappers get old? When did the rebellious, bad-boys we grew up idolizing turn into grandpas? It used to be that we saw hip-hop as a young man’s genre and rock music as the lumbering dinosaur—but this no longer seems to be the case. Hip-hop is catching up. The fast-talking, skinny white boy we knew as the “Real Slim Shady” is suddenly 40. Jay-Z, who claimed he would be “big pimpin’ till the day he died” is 42, happily married with a daughter. Dr. Dre is nearing 50.

Does this mean Dre’s hit classic 90’s album “The Chronic” will be our generation’s equivalent to smoothjazz retirement music? The thought of these rappers turning into senior citizens is uncomfortable—something we somehow never expected to see. And it raises questions of what this new era ushers in for modern hip-hop music.

While exalted rappers such as Tupac and Biggie have been immortalized in the rap world due to their un-

timely deaths, other admired rappers who came up with them do not have this same instant credibility.

Instead, they linger in the public eye as shadows of their former selves, not given the same respect and positive attention as they enjoyed in their younger days.

The rebellious, nonconformist personas that these rappers built their fame on can no longer be their sole identities—after all, they had to grow up. And they are forcing us to grow up with them. These days, we are more likely to see Jay-Z making headlines for raising $4 million for the Obama Campaign than for his controversial “99 Problems” lyrics.

KRS-One famously rhymed “No one’s from the old school, cause rap on a whole isn’t even twenty years old.” Well, hate to say it, but the time has come. The game has changed. •

BY CARRIE YANG, Staff Writer

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inema is not static. The mainstream action blockbuster model of today may soon be replaced, much like how Westerns replaced Film Noir in the 1950’s, to respond to shifting cultural and cinematic expectations. The whole cinematic experience is poised for a new movement. Recently released commercial films such as Cloud Atlas and Life of Pi show Hollywood’s cautious foray into a changing theatrical landscape.

“The whole cinematic experience is poised for a new movement.”

Cinema is essentially art commercialized. While Hollywood executives may wish to adhere to the traditional blockbuster model, this may change in the future as avant-garde and nonWestern films become more mainstream. Though not measuring up to the gross of big-budget films, such

Source: Imdb

Source: vibe.com

movies show that many traditionally Hollywood moviemakers are interested in testing the potential of artistic cinema. More people may start going to movie theaters not just to be entertained but to be immersed in an artistically stimulating experience.

The rise in popularity of indie films and international films shows that there may be a festering cinematic revolution. Many independent and foreign films such as Slumdog Millionaire, Little Miss Sunshine, and Paranormal Activity employ excellent storytelling rather than the latest technological advances in CGI to captivate audiences.

While movies such as The Avengers are aesthetically impressive, future moviegoers may expect movies that offer a more emotionally jarring and thoughtprovoking experience.

Hollywood is an uneasy amalgamation between the creative and the capitalistic, where funding for movies is based on expected viewership rather than artistic value. Ultimately, it is the moviegoers who will decide the direction of this new movement. •

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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

BY JACQUELINE ALAS, Staff Writer

F

fully viewing and scrutinizing the material of its fabrics, its color, and its form to the body. Still, repetition, patterns, and oppositional movements in moving fashion bring clarity to the very fantasy that fashion provokes in printed advertisements. This fantasy is the fetishized moment where an observer imbues qualities into fashion that projects an appealing lifestyle and aes-

or over three centuries, fashion has been captured in frozen poses. Photographers struggle to convey motion and angles in photography; yet the continuity of movement, rhythm, and sound are sensations that cannot be captured in still-life photographs. In reaction to the limitations of still images, a new dimension of fashion, “Moving Fashion,” explores the qualities of moving bodies and fashion in film that cannot be portrayed in conventional printed forms. In January 2012, Vogue Italia claimed that “sometimes a picture is more clear when the image is moving.” However are moving images really “more clear” than still images?

If so, what is made ‘clear’ and how does this new type of clarity change the presentation of fashion?

UC Berkeley Rhetoric Professor Michael Mascuch who has a range of research interests including visual discourse and culture, especially in photography, says, Source: WordPress “An important difference between film and photography is the thetic mood. Film can convey this very representation of time. Film blurs a fantasy through filming techniques and series of 24 frames per second which the arrangement of contents in the imcreates an impression of movement, age. But underlying this fantasy probut this movement also makes it diffi- jected, the camera captures how flesh cult for us to scrutinize visual qualities moves and breathes continuously beof the film in contrast to scrutinizing neath fashion. With fashion surroundphotographs. There is bias of whether ing the human form in film, we see how either films or photographs describe culture shapes the presentation of hureality better than the other. However, mans in clothes and how basic biologiboth film and photography have com- cal sensations underlie contemporary parable truth values because both culture that forms the body in fashion. mediums are not paintings or imagiIn 2005, SHOWstudio, an awardnary depictions. Rather, in both cases, winning fashion website dedicated to there is a camera that captures the im- the study of fashion film and collaboage of objects displayed objectively.” ration with contemporary figures of With Professor Mascuch’s thoughts fashion, started a film project titled in mind, the objective clarity of fashion “Moving Fashion” that aims to explore is less discernible in moving fashion. the representation of fashion through The blur of motion prevents us from sound and movement. Through a se-

ries of short films, “Moving Fashion” presents repetitive movements, dance, and the spontaneity of models moving in front of a camera. The collection of different movements act as a visual experience focused on the sensations of rhythm, music, color, lighting, and digital manipulation. The synchronization of a body’s movement with music, glitter, paint, visual texture, shimmering metallic, and strobe lights create a moving artwork. Fashion becomes a sensational experience where fashion ceases to be a still form and inhabits the fetishized context that we imagine.

While “Moving Fashion” by SHOWstudio is a project centered on the depiction of fashion with primal sensations of seeing color, movement, and texture, other projects focus on the representation of fashion in short narrative plots. For example, Moving Fashion—a Stockholm-based production company, introduces story plots in their presentation of fashion in short films. Hence, the trend of ‘moving fashion’ not only integrates sensations of movement, texture, and rhythm into a visual experience, but also integrates historical and pop culture symbols with contemporary fashion. Both these approaches to exploring moving fashion with either sensational or narrative emphasis celebrate the human being’s biological capacity to enjoy sensations and its cultural capacity to represent the human psyche with fashion narrative.

Ultimately, moving fashion is a new medium in which rhetoric and fetishism is made more apparent by its sensational qualities and its culturally recognizable features that relate to modern and historical roots. Clarity might not just consist of seeing clothing objectively. Rather, clarity may be experiencing fashion in its full fantasized potential—with all its glamour and motion. •

OPINION

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31

The Libertarian Party Must Force the GOP Away from Social Conservatism that minority and independent voters found so difficult to swallow. The Republican Party should have realized f Republithis fact four years ago. Now, the libcans have ertarians among them must force them anything toward this realization to avert electorto be optimistic al humiliation. about after their The Libertarian and Republican ParNovember disasties cannot hope to survive in the comter, it’s the prosing years without each other. Should pect of a new and Republicans continue to stay their conrefined party plattradictory ideological course of espousform. After suffering big and small government, they will ing a thoroughly suffer even greater losses than 2012. If unnecessary dethe Libertarian Party continues standfeat against a president with such a ing alone, hoping to glide by on their mixed and controversial record, the popular social policies, the Democrats problems in the GOP have now been will soon beat them to the chase. highlighted. And the light is most unNow more than ever, the GOP is flattering. weak and losing constituents. For Racially, the GOP isolated Latinos them, the LP is low-hanging fruit, an and ignored Asians. Ideologically, they ever-increasing cohort of voters to be presented independents and moderutilized, if only it can bring itself to ates with few viable choices in the inadopt more of their views. creasingly right-skewing primary field.

The GOP’s arguments for And—most importantly—Democrats free market values are defined and distorted the party’s soundermined by its seemcial positions (e.g. implying that Todd ingly religious devotion Akin was a mainstream—rather than to subsidies; its emphafringe—Republican) with remarkably sis on small government little pushback from the Romney camis weakened by its insispaign. tence on regulating marAlthough the GOP’s focus has been riage and abortion. Until shifting toward fiscal rather than social these discrepancies are mitigated, the issues, Republicans will suffer electorRepublican Party will continue to unally until they address the more difravel, without hope of ficult political views recapturing the “Reaof the more socially gan Democrats”, and conservative meminstead inspiring the bers of their party. dreaded “Obama ReFor the survival of publicans” to increase the GOP, these views the Democrats’ marmust be addressed; gins of victory. and, if the truth is upEconomist and libsetting, they must be ertarian guru David changed.

Friedman holds the Now enter the Libopinion that the Libertarian Party. A party ertarian Party’s very that has struggled for purpose is “to become decades to gain an obsolete,” to eventuaudience wider than ally gather enough its ideological niche, popular support that Libertarian candia major party can no dates have continulonger afford to neously run in the futile glect them. In short, hope that someday, libertarians must someone will listen. keep playing hard to But in 2012, someget, until the GOP thing remarkable ocforces itself away from curred: Ron Paul, social conservatism possibly the highest and toward a 21st profile libertarian icon century political marCan Libertarians save the GOP from cultural irrelevance? alive, ran on a Reriage. • publican ticket and Source: Wikimedia Commons/Argash

BY BRENDAN PINDER, Staff Writer

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enjoyed significant support, with large numbers of Republicans remarkably receptive (if not entirely supportive) of his message. Paul’s unexpected following seems to have signaled a change in the GOP—a shift away from their awkward combination of a government that is both fiscally limited and socially interfering, toward a party that could cooperate with its more philosophically pure libertarian cousin.

Indeed, the Republican Party is already halfway there. Since 2008, a growing focus on the economy at the expense of social issues has characterized the party’s strategy, making voting for a Republican a bit easier for a libertarian to swallow. But the GOP must fight its own dragons before the party purists will allow such an influence. The time of the Tea Party is over.

The old strategy of playing inordinately to the evangelical base must end. The new national demographics will no longer support such an approach.

The same elements in the party that drove Governor Romney to call himself—however uneasily— “severely conservative” were responsible for shaping the GOP’s message into the seemingly anti-immigration, social traditionalist conglomerate

“THE TIME OF THE TEA PARTY IS OVER.”

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bpr.berkeley.edu

OPINION

Puerto Ricans Must Break the Status Quo as Either the 51st U.S. State or an Independent Country

BY ALEX KRAVITZ, Opinion Editor & ANKIT AGGARWAL, Staff Writer

O

n Tuesday, 6 November 2012, Puerto Ricans for the first time voted against the status quo association with the United States.

Since 3 July 1952, when the people of Puerto Rico adopted the Constitution of Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans have maintained their status as a “commonwealth” of the United States, a designation that makes their statutory rights as U.S. citizens no different than if they lived on land over which they had no control whatsoever. This status quo is u n - tenable, yet attempts to change i t through popular plebiscites in 1967, 1993 and

Source for both images: Wikimedia 1 9 9 8 Commons

always resulted in victories for the status quo, a.k.a. “commonwealth,” a.k.a. “none of the above” when statehood and independence were also options.

This year’s plebiscite split the options up into two sections, believing a clear majority would at least reject the first option of status quo. The first sec-

tion asks, “Do you agree that Puerto Rico should continue to have its present form of territorial status?” With 78% of registered voters participating, the answer ‘no’ got a clear majority of 958,915 votes to the ‘yes’ response’s 816,978 votes. Even adding in the 65,863 blank votes and 13,160 invalid votes, Puerto Ricans definitively said “no” to the status quo with over 50% of the vote.

In the second part of the ballot, 61.11% of the votes cast favored the option of statehood. However, because the second part did not include an option for “none of the above”—only statehood, the undefined “sovereign free association”, and independence— 480,918 people left the second section blank. If counted, this population would account for 26.02% of the total electorate, thus meaning statehood would have only received a plurality at 44.6 %.

In absolute numbers, a majority of Puerto Ricans voted against statehood, either directly, or by leaving the second ballot blank (or both), all which complicates the process of Congress approving them as a state. The referendum seems skewed towards statehood, and must be redone. Although the statehood option was more successful that in any previous plebiscite, successive Presidents’ Task Forces on Puerto Rico’s Status since outgoing President Clinton established the body in December 2000 have decided that Puerto Rico should first express clear will against the status quo in a plebiscite including the only three options available under the U.S. Constitution: continuing as a territory; U.S. statehood; or independence. Either statehood or independence must gain a clear majority in a plebiscite in which voting for the status quo is an equal option alongside the other two, then Congress will federally run a plebiscite in Puerto Rico with only two options: to remain a ter-

ritory or pursue a non-territorial status. If the latter option passes, a subsequent plebiscite includes only two options: statehood or independence.

Despite over a decade of POTUScommissioned reports, the pro-statehood Puerto Rican government split the referendum into two parts and included a seeming fourth option on the second ballot that was “sove r eign free association” - something the U . S .

Proposed 51-star flag after Puerto Rican Statehood

does not have since we are not a constitutional monarchy and the POTUS is the head of both state and government—thus necessitating a do-over.

Additionally, the the pro-statehood governor (Luis Fortuño) lost to the procurrent relations candidate (Alejandro García Padilla) on the same day as the plebiscite; the competing politicos wrote separate letters to Congress on the referendum, with Fortuño arguing boricuas want to change the status quo (true based on the first ballot) and García Padilla arguing that status quo continues since statehood received no majority (true based on including protest blank ballots in the second ballot).

To us, the choice is clear: Puerto Ricans must choose to decolonize, or employ electoral power within the colonizer. The latter would be more beneficial to them, as the continental U.S. actually has more Puerto Ricans than the island, and many families have strong ties to the State of New York, especially. Most importantly, Puerto Rico would get two U.S. Senators, five voting U.S. Representatives and at least seven electoral votes for the President, plus their popular votes would count toward the total. •

bpr.berkeley.edu OPINION

winter 2013

33

Personal Tragedy Puts an Atheist Student in a Crisis of Faith

BY TINA PARIJA, Staff Writer

are at odds with one another is misleading, as they fulfill different roles in efore I en- human society and individual lives. As rolled in demonstrated by the infinite religious UC Berke- groups at Cal, religion can be a binding ley, I imagined the force in many communities and supschool as a place port systems. For example, the campus where students Hillel provides both cultural and reliscoffed at reli- gious Jews a place to connect. In the gion and basked past, Black churches provided African endlessly in the Americans with the faith and hope they glory of Science needed to carry them through the civand Rationalism. il rights movement. Americ Azavedo, I was an eigh- professor of “The Theory and Practice teen-year-old atheist, and because of Meditation”, often uses teachings of I had been accepted into some good Eastern religions to inform our study programs here and there, I thought of silence and being. Though scientific if there was any God, it was me. reasoning tries to explain why we feel at It took just a week walking peace when we meditate, it was religion through Sproul to realize that not that carried the message for years and only was religion acknowledged, it gave social power to such practices.

I am still an atheist, but I recognize was both a prominent and celebrated aspect of many students’ lives. the power of religion and its integral This is not what I role in most societies, regardless of signed up for, I thought. whether individuals in those societies Halfway into my freshman year, I use religion to empower their popuwas involved in a car accident that al- lation, or pervert their teachings for most left me permanently disfigured personal socioeconomic gains. I also and nearly took my life. Every day dur- understand that more and more Ameriing that year, I wished for a reason to cans now than ever are identifying as believe that I would be okay, because atheist, agnostic, or unaffiliated with for the longest time, I didn’t know. The any religion. That’s fine, I presumably unscientific and “irrational” comfort share many justifications with this religion often provided others was lost growing crowd, but brought up in a on me, and I regretted that I couldn’t Hindu and Buddhist household, I know that many of the cultural change it. During the values I hold—from the most hopeless months of “I wished for a importance of educamy life, I grew up, and through my subsequent reason to believe tion to generosity—were weaved into the tradiresearch, I learned to that I would be tion of my family through understand why religion okay, because for generations of religious has been so influential practice. These teachthroughout history, and the longest time, ings, though perhaps why the effects of reliI didn’t know.” not through a consoligious teaching will be dated faith, will pass on felt far into the future. future generations as well.

The belief that religion is necessar- to In Berkeley, the tensions between ily a composition of inflexible beliefs that value ignorance above scientific religious and antireligious organizareasoning and “the truth” is wrong. tions are apparent. We may have plenThe notion that science and religion ty of groups representing the larger

B

Our Campanile is based on the Venetian Campanile di San Marcos, another religiouslyinspired but secularly-purposed symbol of bustling activity. Source: Wikimedia Commons

faiths, but we also have the Objectivist Club of Berkeley and Students for a Nonreligious Ethos (SANE). On Facebook, every one of us has witnessed an atheism vs religion showdown.

Some of us have even started them.

So, what happens next? Are the most vocal members of each side suddenly going to convert the other? Will student religious organizations remain as popular as they are today, tomorrow?

Those who believe that their morality is better than those of others solely because of the brand it comes from, whether it is from a religious or secular institution, will make no headway in reaching those who are tied to their own brands. Religious organizations will likely remain popular on campus because they provide smaller communities within this massive student body, and that will always be in high demand. That said, perhaps as explicit religious affiliation becomes less prevalent, students will organize over individual tenets learned through their diverse religious and cultural heritages.

Attachment to the names of religions may slowly fade. Religion’s cultural influence, however, will carry on. •

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OPINION

Why Private Funding Can’t Replace State Support

BY MARTINA CHUN, Staff Writer

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midst recent rigorous fundraising campaigns among public universities, impressive amounts have been geared towards making up for the lack of state support. For example, the Campaign for UC Berkeley (2005-present) has so far raised $2.6 billion out of a target $3 billion by the end of 2013.

This unprecedented level of private funding has led to many hailing it as some kind of a savior for the top tier public U.S. universities to stay competitive with the top tier private ones.

Despite the great irony in ‘public’ schools thriving on private funding, generous support from private donors has indeed allowed UC Berkeley to stay competitive with other top tier schools.

As The Daily Californian reported Chancellor Birgeneau saying at his annual state-of-the-campus news conference, “[i]t’s striking that despite all the travails, we’re doing very, very well”.

From Chancellor Birgeneau’s arrival at UC Berkeley in 2004 to his departure in 2013, state support cut in half, from $500 million dollars to $250 million dollars. Currently, only 11% of the campus budget comes from the state, and UC Berkeley still boasts some of the best programs in the country, from the Engineering College to the College of Natural Resources, which remain #3 and #1 respectively in ranking.

In the 2011-12 fiscal year, UC Berkeley fundraised $410.8 million, and completed the Hewlett Challenge, which was set up in 2007 to endow

100 new faculty chairs. However, private funding cannot completely replace what the state used to provide.

Don’t get me wrong, private funding—especially at this time of financial need—is a must, and it serves as what the Director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education calls “extra padding” to support the school. What really troubles me, however, is that UC Berkeley’s prestige and performance aren’t the only factors that are of concern when it comes to lack of state support. Private funding cannot provide unlimited salvation.

Behind the shiny titles, Nobel Prizewinning faculty, and glowing rankings, UC Berkeley is no longer the beacon of higher public education it used to be.

Decreasing state support has dismantled the mechanisms of fuller and fairer accessibility and affordability. Tuition has increased the past decade in an alarming rate, and “public” education is becoming increasingly difficult for students to afford.

Caitlin Quinn, Deputy of ASUC Vote Coalition and Political Director for Cal Democrats on campus, shares her concern: “Well, I think donations and private funding are great for keeping us competitive, but I worry—there’s nothing wrong with competitiveness and innovation, but we are a public school and if our route is put in the hands of private donors who do not necessarily have the same wants and needs of the student body and state as a whole, that’s where the problem lies.”

Similarly, UCLA spokesperson Phil Hampton asserts that “private giving cannot be seen as a replacement of state funding because most gifts come with restrictions and are intended for specific uses—uses that aren’t funded

by direct state support.”

While students are thankful for the generous support from our donors, we should remember not to over-value the role of private funding. No matter the amount of private funding, there are aspects of a university—be they niche programs or general student financial aid—that only state investment in higher education can fulfill.

Governor Brown’s new budget for the first time since 2007 did not include a deficit, thanks largely to the passage of Prop. 30, whose funds help both the K-12 and the public college systems in California. However, after years of cutbacks, belt-tightening is likely to continue to be the higher education norm for at least the next few years.

Hopefully, the new, minor increases in funding will presage further state support as the state budget begins to deliver surpluses, but for now, keeping the best faculty and doing the most groundbreaking research will continue to require hefty private contributions. •

OPINION

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Elected Officials Keep Their Jobs Despite Incapacitations

BY BEN GOLDBLATT, Staff Writer

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duties, even fellow Democrats—like Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Sen. Dick Durbin—called on Jackson to be more open about his condition. Meanwhile, 700,000 people in the southside of Chicago were left without their federal representative in Washington, D.C. until Rep. Jackson resigned on 21 November 2012. Since his resignation occurred after he was reelected, it necessitated a special election.

Another elected official from Illinois, Republican Sen. Mark Kirk was absent from the Senate for most of 2012 after suffering a debilitating stroke in January. Aides kept constituents updated on the fifty-three year old’s health as he tried to regain usage of the left side of his body at home. Senator Kirk’s condition left him unable to collaborate with colleagues on legislation and attend critical committee hearings and caucus meetings. Sen. Kirk returned to Capitol Hill on 3 January 2013, to bipartisan applause. Nonetheless, Illinois only had one Senator able to perform all duties of the office through nearly all of 2012.

Why not wait for an election to roll around so that these incapacitated members will be removed from office

and replaced with someone more able?

One would assume that the electoral mechanism that the Founders intended to help remove poorly performing members would also help in replacing members that can no longer serve as productive officials. However, a relatively disengaged electorate combined with strong partisan tendencies of districts and states ensures that impaired members are often re-elected. For instance, Rep. Jackson recently won reelection with 63% of the vote in his heavily Democratic district, and many or even most of the voters likely did not even know he was on extended leave.

The fact that these members do not resign and voters often fail to vote them out and replace them with someone else raises an important policy question: If there are minimum requirements to become a member of Congress, why aren’t there minimum requirements to remain a member of Congress? In the House of Representatives, a member must have been a citizen for at least 7 years, be 25 years old and live in the state they represent. Senators, on the other hand, must be a citizen for at least the previous 9 years, be 30 years old, and live in the state they represent. Perhaps members should be required to make a certain number of votes, speak a certain number of times at hearings, or pass some sort of aptitude exam.

No one can blame Sen. Byrd for the decreased mental capacity that comes with age, Rep. Jackson for his bipolar disorder, or Sen. Kirk for his stroke.

While we can certainly feel bad for them, public service is ultimately not about the servant—it’s about the public. With that in mind, the status quo of allowing impaired members to continue to serve must change. •

ongress is clearly in bad shape when some of the body’s members literally cannot do their jobs.

In 2006, at the age of 88, Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia was re-elected to his 9th term in that seat. He became president pro- tempore of the Senate because of his seniority, thus making him third in line to the presidency. Sen. Byrd, who died in 2010, became highly reliant on his Congressional aides during the final years of his life, with some reports claiming aides were constantly whispering in his ear to tell him even the most basic things, such as the names of his colleagues. In a 2007 statement responding to questions about his competence Sen. Byrd said, “When it comes to political office, what really matters are things like drive, determination and the desire to serve.” If Sen. Byrd also considered selflessness, humility, or ability as part of what makes a good public servant, perhaps he would have resigned or declined to run for re-election so that someone else could serve his beloved West Virginians.

As another example, Democratic Illinois Congressperson Jesse Jackson Jr. spent the latter half of 2012 on extended leave, spending much of that time as a patient at the Mayo Clinic for bipolar disorder. As questions foundered about whether Rep. A 91-year-old Senator Byrd, assisted by aides as he walks through the U.S. Capitol.

Jackson would Source: Associated Press. First Published in Los Angeles Times, May 18, 2009 ever return to his

Over the last four years, nearly 700,000 public sector

jobs have been lost. Public sector job losses continue into

our nation’s economic recovery, even as the private sector begins to recover.

Childhood obesity rates, for the first time in three decades, did not grow and actually shrunk by 0.27%.

Only 5% of Americans approved of the 112th Congress that adjourned at the beginning of this New Year. That number is lower than the number of Americans that approve of the IRS, Paris Hilton, Hugo Chavez, banks, and the United States turning to communism.

Last year, the world killed 52 billion chickens for food. We also ate 1.3 billion pigs and 293 million cows.

Research suggests that misinformed people rarely change their minds when presented with the facts—and often become even more attached to their beliefs.