In a May 22, 2008, plenary debate at the UN, members discussed the need for a "human security" focus in addressing national and international security concerns, according to a UN press release. The humanitarian crises caused by the early-May natural disasters in Burma (Myanmar) and China illustrated the need for a human security framework, one where the individual's security is considered part of the nation's security, according to the keynote address delivered by Prince El-Hassan bin Talal of Jordan. He stated: 'I believe that, together, as a global citizenry, we must now confront the many problems that impact our lives...

Dear blog readers, I am pleased to announce that the Spring 2008 edition of the print journal "PolicyMatters" is now up on the blog for your reading and linking pleasure. Read the full issue in PDF format. The individual articles (in PDF format) are linked in the navigation box to the right. Enjoy!...

Come to this talk on Monday afternoon if you can! A Voice From the Burmese Grassroots: a Talk by a Representative of Burma's Only Grassroots Human Rights Organization Date: Monday 5/5/2008 Time: 1:00 pm Place: UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy Room 250 2607 Hearst Ave. (Cross Street: LeRoy Ave) Berkeley, CA 94709 This guest speaker is one of the co-founders of the Human Rights Defenders and Promoters Network (Burma), and a Visiting Scholar at the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center. He will be presenting about his organization's work. In 2002 the HRD started organizing human rights trainings in...

Geoffrey Forden, an MIT physicist and expert on the Chinese space program, was recently interviewed by John Johnson Jr. of the LA Times on the topic of the recent proliferation of space junk from China's missile test last year ("China Added to Space Debris" April 16, 2008). The news item caught my eye with the new-to-me and very impressive sounding word "supercriticality." Apparently that is what happens when space junk collides in a cascade of impacts. It is apparently very, very bad. Space is becoming cluttered to the extent that clutter will beget clutter, and in time it won't be...

Eco-friendly system will put U.S. Capitol in new light - by Christopher Lee, The Washington Post (April 4, 2008) Pelosi plans to upgrade the lighting system at the Capitol Dome. Battling global climate change, one lightbulb at a time... "Everyone supports making the Capitol more energy-efficient, but we don't have to waste taxpayer dollars to do it," said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. "This is a ridiculous boondoggle."...

Tonight the Goldman Environmental Prize winners for 2008 were announced (summaries cribbed from the Goldmanprize.org website): North America: Jesús León Santos, Mexico: In Oaxaca, where unsustainable land-use practices have made it one of the world’s most highly-eroded areas, León initiated a land renewal program that employs ancient indigenous practices to transform depleted soil into arable land. Africa: Feliciano dos Santos, Mozambique: Using traditional music, grassroots outreach and innovative technology to bring sanitation to the most remote corners of Mozambique, Santos empowered villagers to participate in sustainable development and rise up from poverty. South & Central America: Pablo Fajardo Mendoza and...

Cal law professor John Yoo is in the news again lately. Yoo is the author of an infamous August 2002 legal opinion, written while at the US Justice Department, justifying the use of torture in interrogations. Last week the Pentagon declassified another argument by Yoo on behalf of the use of torture, an 81-page memo from March 2003: eyebrows are being raised, to say the least, by the memo's content. Here are a few relevant articles worth reading: "White House asked DOJ how Bush could sidestep Fourth Amendment" - describing the circumstances of the memo, by Jason Leopold for the...

Our own Robert Reich was called on this week by satirist Stephen Colbert to explain how the Democratic front runners will devour themselves. After Prof. Reich soundly rebuffed Colbert's characterization of the Democrats as self-destructive, he faced a battery of culinary metaphors as Colbert attempted to extract Prof. Reich's candidate preference. Lady fingers or black forest cake? Pizza that's half-Hawaiian but you're not sure what it will taste like, or plain pizza with cheese that's been under a heat lamp for thirty-five years? Chocolate bunny or marshmallow chick? When he finally picked one, Colbert said, "I was afraid you were...

As Wall Street puts a low rating on municipal bonds, the cost of improving schools, roads and bridges goes up... cost that gets passed on to the taxpayer in the form of higher fees and interest on public debt. States and Cities Start Rebelling on Bond Ratings: Does Wall Street underrate Main Street? - 3 March 2008 - The New York Times...

The Serbian province of Kosovo, or the Republic of Kosova as the majority Albanian Kosovar population calls it, declared independence last Sunday, February 17th. The UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) is moving out, and a European Union force is preparing to move in to help with the political transition. On Thursday, February 21st, the US Embassy, as well as the embassies of other countries supporting the declaration of independence, suffered attacks in the Serbian capital city of Belgrade. On the UN Security Council, Russia and China are supporting Serbia's claim that Kosovo's declaration violates international law. Meanwhile, the UN force...

This week GSPP first year MPP students had the opportunity to prove their research chops in the rite of passage called the "48 hour project," wherein we had between 0930 Tuesday and 0930 Thursday to write a policy memo on a randomly selected topic. I had the great luck of getting the policy issue of Berkeley's traffic circles, on which almost no person in Berkeley is lukewarm. Everyone is fired up about these European invaders to our conventional grid-pattern streets and intersections. I had the continued great luck of getting on the phone the Berkeley mayor's chief of staff, the...

By S. Moore with Julia Caplan and Lena Hoffman. There are many things that you can do with a Master of Public Policy degree, such as starting your own rock band! Here are some of the best possible econometric band names that we could derive. The Corner Solutions (i.e. will not enter the workforce for any price) The Free Riders The Regressions Loss Function Errors Normally Distributed or E.N.D. -- a la 80's band O.M.D. The Marginal Curves (a girl band) The Homoskedastics (a queer band) The Heteroskedastics (a hair band) The CoVariants Hot solo nightclub / economist soul singer...

...or, how I suffered at the hands of the ambiguous authority behind a flashing LED display and decided to speak truth to power (or AC Transit)... Last night I had a chance to participate in a monthly ritual that has been ongoing since the inception of the Class Pass program in 1999: the Class Pass Advisory Committee. Over the course of two hours representatives of the UC Berkeley Graduate Assembly, students such as myself who had pressing questions, and UC administrative officials got to ask representatives of AC Transit questions about campus bus service. Well, it wasn't all about putting...

On October 26 the GSPP community received official news from Dean Michael Nacht that he intends to step down after ten years as dean of our school. He will take a sabbatical for the academic year 2008-2009 and return in Fall 2009 to resume his full-time position at GSPP teaching and researching US national security policy and management of complex organizations. Dean Nacht writes: It has been a privilege and great pleasure to serve the School and UC Berkeley for the past decade, and I very much look forward to continuing as a member of the GSPP community. I'm sure...

We're now in the 5th inning of game four of the ALCS 2007 championship, there's no score, and I like most of what I'm seeing on the field-- Boston versus Cleveland is a truly worthy match. But the TV continually flashes the two teams logos: a red letter "B" -- and a red grinning "Indian" head. Cleveland's cartoon makes me wince every time. I thought some of the other readers of Policy Matters might want to learn more about this curious hold-over from the 1950's. Cleveland's baseball team went through a list of names over forty years before landing with...

The US Employment Non-Discrimination Act (or ENDA) has gone to Washington, again, this time incarnated as H.R. 2015: the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2007. It reached the the House Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee in September, and was slated to go to the floor for a vote last week. Monday night Speaker Pelosi's office announced a decision to delay the bill as the authors revisit recent revisions that stripped the bill of gender identity protections. Pelosi announced “After discussions with congressional leaders and organizations supporting passage of ENDA, we have agreed to schedule mark-up of the bill in the...

Judge Tashima said that the Bush administration is at war with the rule of law.