Snellmanin viisautta

"Yksilon tiedot ovat taysin tyhjan paalla eivatka ansaitse tietamisen tai sivistyksen nimea, jos ne eivat ole itsenaisesti hankittua, ajateltua ja yksilolliseksi kokonaisuudeksi muokattua tietoa.

Aivan samoin ei myoskaan kokonaisen valtakunnan sivistys saa olla pelkkaa jaljittelya, ulkomaista lainaa, vaan silla taytyy olla kansallishenkeen perustuva omintakeinen muoto. On totta, etta kaikkein sivistynein kansakunta on se, joka on kaikkein eniten omaksunut yleisinhimillista sivistysta. Mutta talla sivistyksella ei ole mitaan annettua, muuttumatonta muotoa, vaan se on itsessaan elavaa ja liikkuvaa, se saa jokaisena aikana uuden muodon. Tama kehitys tapahtuu juuri sivistyksen siirtyessa kansakunnalta toiselle.

Sivistys, joka ei ole kansallista, ei siten voi olla todellista yleisinhimillista sivistysta. Se on silloin vain ulkoista tottumusta, jota voi verrata apinan tai koiran kouluttamiseen. Kansakunta ei voi kiinnostua sellaisesta sivistyksesta, se ei ole itsenaista eika silla ole voimaa kehittya. ja kansan, joka ei milloinkaan saavuta muunlaista sivistysta, on itse rappeuduttava ja havittava kansakuntana."

J. V. Snellman Suomen Kuvalehden mukaan [SK 14, 2006]

Luin juttua Snellmanista, ja mieleeni tuli tilanne Irakissa: voiko Irak demokratisoitua jos opit tuodaan ulkoapain, toisenlaisesta kulttuurista ja pyssynpiipun turvin? Vai onko Irakin miehitys ja "demokratisoiminen" vain koirankoulutusta?

Uskon, etta demokratia on kuin sivistys josta Snellman puhuu - sen on tultava sisaltapain ja oltava omintakeista, omaan kulttuuriin sitoutuvaa ja sopivaa. Ja kansakunnan on sita itse haluttava ja vaadittava; silloin kansa on siihen valmis.

Maailman huolet

Maailma ei pysy aloillaan; kun George leikkii sotaa yhdessa paikassa, muualla maailmassa velloo levottomuuden aallokko. Kansainvalinen diplomatia on monimutkaista ja vaatii jatkuvaa hienosaatoa, karsivallista neuvottelutaitoa ja kompromissien tekoa. Yhdysvaltain presidentin luonteeseen eivat kuulu tallaiset ominaisuudet: han on Texasista, jossa ammutaan ensin ja kysytaan sitten.

Muutaman vuoden maailmamme kestaa moista holtittomuutta, mutta nyt on aika maksaa laulujen lunnaat. Pohjois-Korea kay kuumana ja nayttaa muille keskisormea, Afganistan on joutumassa uudelleen kaaoksen valtaan, Somaliassa kuohuu, Iran uhmaa kansainvalista yhteisoa ja Irak ei ota oppiakseen demokratian alkeita. Venajakin nayttaa putovan demokratian karryilta...

Yhdysvallat on maailman ainoa supervalta, ja siksi sen on oltava aktiivisesti edistamassa rauhaa ympari maailman. Mutta ei nyrkilla tai risulla, vaan samettivasaralla ja porkkanalla. Silla mita isot edella sita pienet perassa.

Bush on opettanut, etta on parasta hankkia ydinaseita suojautuakseen amerikkalaisten hyokkaykselta. Tallaisen johtopaatoksen voisi vetaa Irakin, Iranin ja Pohjois-Korean kohdalla...



Analysis Bush confronts a world of troubles
By Michael Abramowitz and Robin WrightThe Washington Post

WASHINGTON — From deteriorating security in Afghanistan and Somalia to mayhem in the Middle East, confrontation with Iran and eroding relations with Russia, the White House suddenly sees crisis in every direction.

North Korea's long-range missile test Wednesday, although unsuccessful, was another reminder of the bleak foreign-policy landscape that faces President Bush even outside of Iraq. Few foreign-policy experts foresee the reclusive Stalinist state giving up the nuclear weapons it appears to have acquired, making it another in a long list of world problems that threatens to cloud the closing years of the Bush administration, according to foreign-policy experts in both parties.

"I am hard-pressed to think of any other moment in modern times where there have been so many challenges facing this country simultaneously," said Richard Haass, a former senior Bush administration official who heads the Council on Foreign Relations. "The danger is that Mr. Bush will hand over a White House to a successor [who] will face a far messier world, with far fewer resources left to cope with it."

White House officials reject such pessimism, and Wednesday leading figures in both parties saw some diplomatic opportunity for the United States in the missile failure. But the launches of it and six other shorter-range missiles underscored how the administration has lost the initiative it had after the Iraq invasion, leaving at risk the central Bush aspiration of democracy-building around the world.

The launches also showed how the huge commitment of resources and time on Iraq — and the falloff in international support for the United States — has limited the administration's flexibility in handling new world crises.
"This is a distracted government that has to take care of too many things at the same time and has been consumed by the war on Iraq," said Moises Namm, editor of Foreign Policy magazine.

National-security adviser Stephen Hadley said Wednesday such criticism is misplaced, adding that victory in Iraq is crucial to success in fighting terrorists and in creating a new democracy that could serve as a beacon to other Middle Eastern countries.
Hadley agreed there are "a lot of issues in motion right now" on the international front. "In some sense, it was destined to be, because we have a president that wants to take on the big issues and see if he could solve them on his watch."

Even in the context of a post-Sept. 11 world, the array of tough, seemingly intractable foreign problems is spreading.
Renewed violence has expanded to major cities throughout Afghanistan, as Afghan rebels adopt tactics of Iraqi insurgents and as President Hamid Karzai's popularity has plummeted.
Iran is balking at demands to come clean or compromise on its nuclear program, despite new U.S. and European incentives. Palestinians launched longer-range missiles into Israel, while Israel has authorized its army to invade part of northern Gaza.

Oil prices rise
Meanwhile, an Islamist militia in Somalia seized control of the capital, Mogadishu. Mexico's future is uncertain after a close and disputed presidential election. And Wednesday, the price of light crude hit a new high of $75.19 a barrel.

Concern about such developments is cutting across the normal fault lines in U.S. politics, with critiques being expressed by conservative realists such as Haass and liberal internationalists such as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
Albright said Wednesday that the United States faces the "perfect storm" in foreign policy. "The U.S. is not as unilateral as it is uni-dimensional," she said. "We have not been paying attention to a lot of these issues. ... Afghanistan is out of control because not enough attention was paid to it."

Even neoconservative hawks who have been generally supportive of the administration on Iraq and other issues said they are worried about the direction of U.S. foreign policy and hope for a muscular response from the Bush administration toward the latest North Korean actions.

"North Korea is firing missiles. Iran is going nuclear. Somalia is controlled by radical Islamists. Iraq isn't getting better, and Afghanistan is getting worse," said William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and a leading conservative commentator. "I give the president a lot of credit for hanging tough on Iraq. But I am worried that it has made [the White House] too passive in confronting the other threats."

Working with allies
Senior administration officials said the United States is in a much stronger diplomatic position than it has been in the past in dealing with adversaries such as North Korea and Iran. On both fronts, the administration has engaged in much more aggressive multilateral diplomacy than it did in Bush's first term, and that effort could bear fruit, they said.

Hadley predicted the results of aggressive diplomacy would be seen in the next few days with a strong condemnation of North Korea at the United Nations.
"We saw this coming. We worked the diplomacy," he said. "North Korea went ahead, and in so doing didn't defy [only] us but defied the entire international community."

Some outside experts agreed Wednesday's seven missile launches could help the administration make the case to China to work harder to rein in North Korea.
"This has to have gotten China's attention," said Rep. Jane Harman of California, the senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee. "What some may see as a series of setbacks, I see as a series of opportunities," she said.

Democrats and Republicans insisted the United States can deal with multiple crises, but some questioned how effectively.
"Every situation makes it more difficult to deal with another," said Zbigniew Brzezinski, national-security adviser in the Carter administration.
"It's like a juggler. You have to keep all the balls going. Any one of them that is out of trajectory threatens all the others."

Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company

Telttaretki

Olimme taman jarven rannalla telttailemassa Vancouverin saarella Brittilaisessa Kolumbiassa. Ilmat olivat upeat: aurinkoista ja lamminta eika hyttysiakaan ollut kuin nimeksi. Kummasti unohtuu kaikki huolet ja maailman murheet kun paivat ovat taynna kokkaamista, tiskaamista, riippukeinussa makaamista ja rannalla loikomista.

Itsenaisyyspaiva

Olemme menossa Kanadaan, Vacouverin saarelle telttailemaan muutamksi paivaksi. Tiistai, heinakuun neljas on Yhdysvaltain itsenaisyyspaiva ja vapaata "kaikilla". Kanadan rauha on mita parhain paikka viettaa tata juhlallista paivaa. Kesa on parhaimmillaan: aurinkoinen, lammin ja valoisa.

Korkein oikeus on juuri paattanyt, etta Kuubassa pidettyja "terroristi" vankeja ei saa pitaa loputtomasti lukkojen takana, silla se on vastoi kansainvalisia lakeja (oliko kukaan tasta yllattynyt?). Nyt on Bushin ja kumppaneiden keksittava toisenlaista puuhaa Guantanamon vartijoille.

Salaisuuksien valtio

Korallimeri

Washingtonin rannikolta on vastikaan loydetty upeita koralleja. Tutkijat sanoivat loydon olleen "kuin olisi loytanyt sademetsan". Mutta namakin korallit ovat uhattuja, silla liika kalastus ja varsinkin troolaus vie korallit meren pohjasta. Koralleilla on tarkea rooli meren ekosysteemissa, joten niita tulisi suojella.


http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003087953_coral27m.html

Terveys ja tasavertaisuus

Washingtonin yliopiston professori Stephen Bezruchka kirjoittaa, etta vaikka Yhdysvallat on maailman - ja historian - rikkain valtio, sen kansalaiset ovat sairaampia ja kuolevat nuorempina kuin monen muun maan "koyhemmat" kansalaiset. Miksi?

Bezruchka analysoi, etta viimeisten 30 vuoden ajan Amerikassa on tietoisesti poliittisella tasolla suosittu rikkaita tyovaeston ja keskiluokan kustannuksella. Tama on johtanut valtavan suuriin luokkaeroihin; ja mita suurempi kuilu koyhien ja rikkaiden valilla, sen huonompi terveys koko yhteiskunnalla! Yksilon terveystottumukset eivat ole niin tarkeita kuin poliittiset ja taloudelliset paatokset valtakunnallisella tasolla. Siksi rikkaatkin sairastavat enemman kuin heidan "pitaisi".

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/275142_focus25.htmlEconomic


Sunday, June 25, 2006
By STEPHEN BEZRUCHKA GUEST COLUMNIST

The headlines read that rich Americans aren't as healthy as poor Brits, despite our spending twice as much money on health care as they do. Our newborns die at the highest rates of any rich country, even with our ever-advancing medical technologies. The feds report our mortality rates have never been lower. The United Kingdom study director suggests it is the nature of an unequal society in the United States that affects everybody, while experts over here are puzzled. What is going on?

Thomas Pynchon wrote in "Gravity's Rainbow" that "if they can get you asking the wrong question, they don't have to worry about the answers." Which medical care drug plan to choose is the wrong question. Instead let's ask, "What makes a society healthy?"
An MDeity can't answer that, nor can most people working in public health departments. One reason for their ignorance: It is very difficult to get people to understand something when their salary depends on their not understanding it. Medical doctors are paid to treat diseases, so everyone has a disease if we do enough tests. Public health workers ply a trade, make sure enough kids get their shots, tell people to say no or wear a condom and check the water for arsenic. They consider efforts to understand basic conditions that produce health in society to be outside their job description.

Who can tell us the answer to what makes a population healthy? Few in this country know, because we don't ask that question. Anyone who does is marginalized for acting stupid. I was told "Medical care, of course, that's why we are teaching you to be a good doctor." Our federal government, in its Institute of Medicine 2003 report "The Future of the Public's Health in the 21st Century," states on page 59: "more egalitarian societies (i.e. those with a less steep differential between the richest and the poorest) have better average health." This remarkable finding has emerged from research carried out over the last 25 years, and the science is as good as that linking smoking and poor health.

Why aren't the media broadcasting this news? For the last quarter century it has become unpatriotic to believe in economic justice. Instead we give ever more to the rich through tax cuts and subsidies and demand that the poor accept having less, in the hopes of some trickling down. Egalitarianism is not a treatment taught in U.S. medical and public health schools, nor in any school except kindergarten.

What is it about a bigger differential between the richest and poorest that leads to worse average health? Intuitively, we can see that not everyone shares the same stress in a bigger-gap society and those lower down suffer more of the slings and arrows of misfortune rained down from above. There is less caring and sharing in society when the gap is in our face.
Other research findings demonstrate that individual behaviors are not as important for our health as political policies that impact the gap between the rich and the poor. These behaviors are those we have learned since about toddlerdom: diet, exercise and not smoking. They are good ideas but when compared with economic justice, these individual practices are relatively unimportant. For example, the healthiest country in the world, Japan, has the highest proportion of men smoking among all rich countries. Obviously smoking is not good for your health but compared with the less steep differential, it is not as important a factor. As a doctor who used to badger people about this habit, it was very difficult for me to reconcile this finding. Studies demonstrate the individual behaviors are not that important for our health. Health care, even universal health care, has been shown to have little or no overall impact on a nation's health.

The spending on health care in the United States makes up nearly one half of all monies paid for health care worldwide. Despite that, we who live in the USA, the richest country in world history (with half of the globe's billionaires), die younger than we should. To understand this conundrum, the first step we must take is to recognize that health and health care are two very different concepts -- despite sounding so similar. Health of societies is mostly determined by political and economic policies while health care can only prevent and treat individual diseases.

The United States used to be one of the healthiest countries in the world when egalitarian principles were near the horizon. President Kennedy told us not to ask what our country can do for us but to ask what we can do for our country. His request came after a decade of policies in which the poor made relatively more economic gains than the rich, something Robin Hood might have admired. For example, in the United States the general population shared its income growth with returning World War II veterans and subsidized their re-entry into society. Back then we were one of the healthiest countries in the world -- but not for long. The rich and powerful interpreted the president's remarks to mean, "What can ordinary people do for us?" During the last 30 years the rich have gotten much richer, and we have strayed far from egalitarian ideals.

The increasingly steep differential between the richest and poorest is the reason why we are as healthy as Cuba, the country we have been strangling for almost 47 years. While our health as a nation has been improving, other countries are seeing better and faster results. People in more than 25 countries, including nearly all the rich nations and a few poor ones as well, live longer and healthier lives than we do.

There is currently no federal agency, or any other body, whose goal it is to make us healthier compared with other nations. Our Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have put forth Healthy People 2000 and 2010 initiatives, with disease and behavior oriented national goals, but we did not achieve these goals in 2000, and have no chance of coming close to fulfilling them in the next four years. They do not address our standing compared with other nations. This is like giving the Olympic Gold Medal not to the winner, but to the contestant who said they tried the hardest!

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who can't read or write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn. Much of what I learned in medical school is not acceptable practice today. Some of what we think we know today will be folly tomorrow. What the Institute of Medicine reports will, I think, stand the test of time. If we want healthy grandchildren, we must seriously consider what the feds have said.

Economic justice is the medicine we need. In today's situation, this requires overturning all the recent federal legislation that gives ever more to the rich. The work of the Hood Robins (who take from the poor and give to the rich) is bad for our health, as our own Institute of Medicine acknowledges. Perhaps we should demand a Health Impact Assessment like other countries, to track the toll in human lives sacrificed by political policies that favor the rich over the poor.
This state's Washington Health Foundation is unique in the nation for trying to make Washington state the healthiest in the country. According to a composite indicator used to rank the health of states, we have fallen to 15th place while Minnesota is first and Louisiana is last. To effect real change and improve health through this country, I suggest we strive to make Louisiana first in the nation. That state has among the highest infant death rates, the shortest length of life, the highest homicide rates, the highest teen birth rates and the biggest gap between rich and poor. Katrina's aftermath was no accident. By concentrating on improving health in this country's worst off state, everyone will do better.

The last 40 years have seen an unbridled giveaway to the minority of the wealthy and powerful, as politicians distorted Kennedy's words and did what they could for the rich of America. It is now time for the majority, who make up the bottom 80 percent of this nation, to ask what our country can do for us. Everyone's health, both rich and poor, will benefit from this old-fashioned idea: economic justice.

Stephen Bezruchka, M.D., MPH, is with the Department of Health Services, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, at the University of Washington.
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