Over the years I have seen countless TV shows in which a smart detective tried to find ways to sidestep diplomatic immunity in order to send behind bars foreigners who committed a crime on US soil. It seems therefore that Americans value accountability. If you do a crime, you do the time is a popular motto in the U.S.
Now we see the President of the United states pardoning a convicted criminal that helped his administration destroy a political opponent who was just trying to say the truth. Conservative representatives seem to be very happy with this move. However I cannot imagine the American people backing such an outrageous decision.
Who really believes that the sentence was too harsh? Thousands have died because of pre-war lies spread by the President and his entourage. Valerie Plame’s life and career was deliberately destroyed by Lewis Libby. This was proven by the case’s prosecutor and a jury declared him guilty despite countless attempts by his political friends to cast a positive light on this sinister character.
At this point it is clear that George W. Bush has lost any moral authority he had left. However, this scandal goes way beyond the Presidency. The political right has always claimed the ownership of the words morality and decency. It is evident that we must all hope that these values can be found elsewhere, because when it comes to the Republicans, the facts have proven that they see them simply as empty words.
Over the last few years, in most countries, statistics have shown that, in general the trend is pointing towards lower participation in public elections. In some cases, a particular election can break the trend, specially when important matters are at stake, people live in fear or when the country is highly divided on a particular subject. However, analysts usually assumed that citizens had progressively lost interest in politics. As a result, in some countries it has become usual to see participation scores well below the 50% mark. This obviously raises a lot of questions about the legitimacy of those elected under these circumstances.
Raising participation numbers in local, state and national elections should be the primary goal of every true democrat. Too often do we see a candidate win because it’s supporters are more committed than those who back the opposition. Some may consider that fair but I disagree. We should only be satisfied with election results when they are accompanied by high participation rates across the board. That is why I was so glad to see an amazing 85% participation rate in France’s Sunday presidential election. This result really deserves a standing ovation and we should all work in our countries to make sure that we obtain similar results in future elections.
Even though France cannot claim to be the oldest modern time republic (that honor goes to the Dutch), it is well known that many of the ideals that inspired both the US Constitution and the French Revolution, came from French thinkers. That leads many to consider France to be the cradle of democracy. Seeing that 218 years after the French Revolution, democracy is still alive and well in that country is something to cheer about.
There is no doubt that the movie “An inconvenient truth” was able to change the perception of where our world is heading if we fail to act. The movie, combined with high gas prices and the war and Iraq was able to shake consciences and get our society moving. I am amazed by the incredible amount of business initiatives related to new renewable energy, plug-in vehicles, recycling and conservation in general and I am sure that everyone gets excited at the prospects these new technologies create.
I think however, that we are being misled. Most people seem to believe that we can solve the problem by changing slightly our behavior and applying new technologies. The truth is that we will need to go further. Initiatives like ethanol adoption may reduce foreign oil dependency in the US but consequences on the environment are far from clear. The Brazilian experience with bio-fuels is far from conclusive with many experts blaming in part deforestation in that country on the growth of the sugar cane plantations which are needed to produce that fuel. Other fuels perceived as alternatives to oil like diesel or hydrogen have their own issues. With really clean energy sources such as wind or solar growing too slowly, our only real option is to reduce energy consumption. Besides energy, the world is facing other problems such as lack of drinking water or food. How is that possible? Never in history has so much food been available and the same applies to water. The problem is simple, there world population is now six billion and counting. Since we cannot easily increase food, water or energy supply, the solution has to come from reducing the last variable, human population.
Do not worry, I am not proposing at all to start World War III or executing minority groups. What I would like to see is an open debate around the subject. What people should understand is that if for one generation (25 years) each woman only had one child, all the catastrophic prophecies mentioned by Al Gore would probably not happen. I am really puzzled by the fact that a solution as obvious as this one (although extremely hard to implement) is not even mentioned in most discussions. However, if we do not discuss the matter, it is very unlikely that parents will even consider the impact on the environment of having a large family.
Over the last few decades, in most countries (even the emerging ones), birth rates have been decreasing steadily. One reason has been the fact that parents have been bombarded with (not always obvious) messages on TV, movies and radio telling them not to have more children than they could afford. As a result, parents in those countries feel that they have the obligation to provide their children with good education, long vacations, and abundant clothing. As a result, couples have reduced the number of children they decide to have. That message has been good for children, parents and society in general. Why not slightly update that message now and include the fact that small families are good for the planet too and repeat it all over the world until everyone gets it?
We all know why. Such a message goes against the holy scriptures of most large monotheistic religions. Of course, at the time, the goal of their leaders was to outgrow their competitors to convert non-believers, by force if necessary, which made large armies a necessity. Today we face a planetary crisis. We need to discuss the options with an open mind. If this means upsetting some religious bigots, I personally don’t care much. More important issues are at stake.
One nice thing about traveling to a country every year or two is that you can better appreciate what is happening there (or not) and measure the pace of change. Now that I am back from my recent trip to Spain I can confidently state that from a politics standpoint nothing hasn’t changed much over the last twenty years or so. That country is Spain. After the death of dictator Francisco Franco, the country went to an accelerated democratization process that culminated with the election in 1982 of Felipe Gonzalez as the first socialist prime minister after forty years of fascism. That, in addition to over three decades of prosperity, shoul have put an end to a dark chapter of Spanish history. It did not.
It turns out that democracy and prosperity were unable to heal the deep scars that still divide the Spanish society today. Political tensions are currently running at an extremely unusual level for a country that is witnessing economic growth and slowly decreasing unemployment. On one hand, the right wing party (Partido Popular) simply does not stand being in the opposition and violently criticizes any decision taken by the government, trying to polarize society over any issue in order to regain power. The situation, is in many ways similar to what happened back in the thirties when the right believed that the country could not survive a socialist government and therefore started the civil war. This is, by the way, a common lie spread by politicians, as history has demonstrated that, in democratic countries that obey the rule of law, elected government really do not have the capability to cause irreparable harm during their term. On the other hand, separatist parties in Euskadi and Catalonia keep their fight to become more independent, or simply, independent. They claim that they want to separate from Spain because they are different from the rest of the Spaniards, however, what they really mean is that they are better than the rest. This isn’t new either.
This ridiculous belief that people in a region can be better than their neighbours, is a direct result of the industrialization process that occured during the 19th century. There are many countries where this can be clearly witnessed. In Italy for example, the industrious North has had many temptations to separate from the agricultural South. In Mexico, Northerners tend to feel superior to Southerners, because industry has made them richer. This is specially ridiculous because these regions did not prosper because their inhabitants were particularly smart or worked harder, it was simply because it was where natural resources were located. In some countries, that ill-gotten pride disappeared when the industrial model started to collapse in Western countries (this for example happened clearly in England during the second half of the XXth century). In other parts of the world, though, in industrial regions that were able to maintain their leading economic status, this transition never happened and this superiority complex that has been living in the collective unconsciousness is being used by politicians for their personal gain.
What really strikes me is how such an open society can still be fighting over the same battles that have caused so much pain in the past. The will to be right is definitively winning over the search for truth and peace. This is absolutely ridiculous. We live in a globalized world and the population is rapidly growing. We cannot keep paying attention to old quarrels when facing new global challenges such as global warming. The solution, from my point of view, is talking about issues that really affect the quality of living of the people. Providing free health care to everyone is such an issue. Creating new countries in large economic block such as the EU in order to issue new passports is not.
We keep telling adolescents that there are many dangerous things that they must avoid (alcohol, drugs, unprotected sex and now the Wii), even if it means not being able to belong to a group they want to be part of. I would argue that nationalism as well as radical ideologies are at least as dangerous for the adults, who are usually responsible for having their children fighting their own battles. Education is the main vehicle for passing hatred and misinformation from one generation to the next. As parents we have an obligation to maintain an open mind and try to understand all the perspectives. As human beings we have the obligation to always try to be objective, irrespective of what may have been taught to us. Truth shall make us free, but truth is sometimes hard to find. Keeping an open mind as well as always trying to be objective is probably an easier goal to reach.
In the fifties, in most countries there was a single TV channel. This made it a very coveted media for politicians, who bitterly fought over control of TV news in order to influence voters. This fight for control of mass media continued until recently. In the 90s there was much concern that a media mogul like Ruppert Murdoch could use his empire to shape public opinion and this fear prompted many democratic nations to pass laws against excessive media conglomeration.
With the advent of the Internet, those fears are quickly fading. There are many ways to get the bare facts and blogs provide countless reactions to those facts. Following a trend that started in the 90s with News channels such as Fox that present the information clearly eschewed toward a particular point of view, it is now very easy to find information analyzed by people who think the same way you do.
Since there will be an almost infinite number of channels, people will have a better opportunity to position themselves exactly where they want to on the political spectrum, instead of having to chose from a discrete number of options, like we do today.
As a result, instead of having two or three large movements competing for power, it is likely that in the future there will be a very large amount of relatively small loosely connected groups of people who share similar opinions. It is hard to imagine that a leader from such a small group could emerge as a leader of a large enough coalition to run a country while maintaining that leadership. However, it is more likely that coalitions will form ad hoc, based on particular proposals.
This leaves me to a simple conclusion. In the future, a system based on political parties will not be aligned with the way people think about or even discuss issues. If we want to preserve democracy in such a world, we will have to change the current system.
One solution could be to ask the people to vote on each major issue through referendums (probably online, to reduce the costs associated with an increased number of elections). That means that the government will have reduced executive powers and as a result is likely to become a technocracy over time.
I do not believe that this is a very compelling scenario because a technocracy could give too much power to non-elected bureaucrats. This would therefore require some mechanism that would maintain the public servants under control and such a system could prove difficult to implement.
Of course there probably are many other options. However, we should start thinking right now about how the internet is changing our society and how this will impact the way people will want their respective countries to be run in the future. This is a nice challenge for the day after election day.
As expected, today Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death. The head of a regime based on terror certainly deserved a harsh punishment for his acts. The defense argument that Saddam did not order the slaughter of Kurds as a Shiites after they tried to free themselves from his ruthless rule is simply childish and unsustainable.
However, it is also true that this trial was a mockery of justice, organized by the Bush Administration and their Iraqi puppet government to justify the American intervention after other arguments presented to the American people, such as the WMD, have proven to be false. The timing of the sentence is by itself very suspicious, just a couple of days before an important U.S. election which is expected to condemn Bush over its own actions.
The truth is that we are all responsible for what is happening in Iraq today. We all knew that Saddam was a threat to his own people as well as neighbors and we never did anything to stop him until the 9/11 attack. A couple of years later, many believe that Americans should have listened to the French and not invade Iraq to avoid the countless victims that have resulted from the invasion, but that logic is also flawed because it would have left a ruthless dictator in power, even though that would probably have resulted in a much lesser evil. Of course, the foreign and local islamic extremists are also largely responsible for the suffering of Iraqis who are being slaughtered, in a war that is, in general, not theirs.
Many believe that the only way to quickly reduce the violence is to divide the country in three (this is not very easy as there are important minority enclaves). However, this is unlikely to happen since the U.S. and Europe are concerned that an oil rich Shiite South could ally, or even merge with Iran which has generated lots of justified concerns with its nuclear ambitions. They are also concerned about an oil rich Kurd country that could in the future represent a threat to Turkey which rules over a Kurd minority that has always aspired to independence. Therefore, we are trying to maintain the integrity of a country by force, much in the same way Saddam did it, even though, we can obviously not compare the U.S. forces, which try to respect human rights, to the military forces from the Baath regime.
The fact is that in Irak there is no white and black. All the players are grey, defending primarily their own interests with no real concern for the Iraqi people. While I am personally against the death penalty, which should not come as a surprise being European, the truth is that defending him is hardly one of my priorities. I am much more concerned about what we call justice. There are countless players that have shaped the current situation in Iraq and most will never get to be judged. Even worse, they will claim that they did what they did in order to help the Iraqis. Today we should all examine our conscience and see if some of our acts (supporting Bush, Blair or Aznar, turning a blind eye to the situation or simply ignoring it) have helped shape the current situation. I really believe that this exercise will help us see the gray in us.
Today, more violence is expected. More innocent Iraqis will die. For them and their families, knowing Saddam’s fate is probably totally irrelevant.
I just finished reading an article over Air America Radio filing for bankruptcy. I did not expect readers to analyze this information in the context of a general reduction of audiences for this particular media, after all, Air America was planned from its inception as a platform for liberals to communicate their message and counter the influence of conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh who had dominated the air waves for many years and helped put George W Bush into the White House. So, with the November elections just around the corners I expect this articles to generate sparkles and some productive political debate.
I was wrong, dead wrong. Sure there were sparkles, the animosity between liberals and conservatives is at its high, but there was no debate, no debate at all. Don’t get me wrong, the usual issues about the War in Irak, the honesty of the President, the need for a strong leader in a period of war and the price of gas were all risen, but the debate was shallow.
What I do not understand is how Americans can be so divided, when both sides are so alike. Doesn’t everyone realize that there is a consensus on most major issues? Both parties want lower taxes, better security, lower gas prices, etc. and the proposed solutions are almost similar. So, basically Americans are arguing about leadership, not ideas. Most Americans despise the French but in France at least there is some true political going on. Right and Left do actually have some meaning (and I am not talking about the right to wear a gun or discussing if Evolution is science or a theory). This is good because political discussions get deeper and more interesting.
Political correctness has limited the debate to minor topics. The only reason most Americans will likely vote Democrat next month is because they do not like the way the Irak war is unraveling, not because you were against it in the first place. That could have been a good opportunity for debate, but since it is politically incorrect not to support the President in times of war, almost no one questioned George W Bush decisions. When it became clear that Iraq had no WMDs, the debate could have shifted to the possibility of bringing the troops home. However, that couldn’t be discussed either because it could embolden terrorists and endanger the soldiers. Finally, when the Abu Ghraib prison scandal surfaced, the politically correct media was quick to mention that this should not be used to criticize the military because that would be un-American. So, what can be discussed in American Politics? Gas price? No wonder all news channels spend so much time discussing this incredibly important topic, even if Americans pay less for their gas than any other developed country.
It is clear to me that political correctness limits liberty, because even if you are allowed to say things that are politically incorrect, you will find yourself quickly labeled as an extremist. However, even if people decide to stay within the narrow margins set by the political correctness rules, the are many subjects which deserve discussion. My goal here is not to enumerate all the possible topics that could be debated in American Politics, just to demonstrate that there are more interesting and relevant subjects than the price of oil.
Take for example the Constitution. It was written over 200 years ago. Does it need to be rewritten? For many, this is a ridiculous question, the Constitution has served the U.S. well. However, there are many things that I do not like about the U.S. Constitution. The people of the United States (the same ones mentioned in “We the people…”) actually never got to vote on the subjects of slavery and child labor. The decision to eliminate these abominable practices were taken by the Supreme Court, nine judges who supposedly interpret the meaning of the Constitution but in reality take political decisions without asking the People. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a Constitution that explicitly prohibits child labor and have that Constitution approved by the American citizens? I think so. I believe that Americans would feel better knowing that it was the People who declared slavery illegal instead of nine judges who have not been directly elected.
So, wake up, there are many interesting and important debates in Politics. Things can change. Everything should be open to debate. Use your liberty and democracy to discuss real issues not just management styles and results. Finally, respect those who think different, they may not be morons and you can probably learn something from them.
Since the launch of the new iTunes store, there have been stories published by major newspapers that Wall-Mart has been threatening the movie industry with retaliation if they signed a distribution deal with Apple. This story has some credibility as it is well known that Wall-Mart controls 40% of the DVD retail market and they are probably less than thrilled at the idea of losing it. The question here is where is the Federal Trade Commission, which is responsible to protect free trade in the U.S. A simple announcement that they would take a look into this matter would have been more than enough to scare Wall-Mart and have them back-down. Instead, it has been the reaction of the users of the Internet that has prompted Wall-Mart to issue a denial of the accusations. Meanwhile the FTC has continued ignoring the story. This proves that once again, big business is not really threatened by the FTC, but we already knew that. In the monopoly suit against Microsoft it was the States that carried the burden of the lawsuit, not the Federal Government. It is clear to me that the FTC is not working and that something needs to be done in order to fix it.
Last week researchers from Princeton University demonstrated that Diebold voting machines could easily be hacked into in less than four minutes.
The Diebold voting machines were designed to avoid a repetition of the 2000 U.S. presidential election which demonstrated that current election results are an approximation, at best, with unacceptable error margins in a deeply polarized country. It is likely that the negative publicity surrounding these devices will delay the adoption of a technology that could have helped to rebuild the faith of the public in the vote counting process. This is too bad, but I am sure that everyone agrees that it is better to continue using manual counting than implement a notoriously flawed technology.
However, I am sure that many, including myself, would like to see more progress in the area of e-voting, not because we want better counting but because we want a deeper, richer democracy.
In most countries, voters go to the polls only once every couple of years. Between elections we trust our representatives to make the right choices. That is obviously a big mistake. During a term there are many decisions that are just too important to leave to the good judgement of politicians. In countries like Switzerland there are referendums almost once every two weeks, and the people can overturn a decision made by the government quite rapidly. That is what I would like to see happening in larger countries where it is currently quite difficult to implement such a direct democracy model because of cost and logistics issues.
The promise of the Internet has always been the elimination of middlemen. We have seen this happening in the travel, recording, and computer industry (Dell for instance pioneered the direct sales model). Why not in politics?
Getting rid of politicians may not be a good idea, after all we will probably need leaders with ideals to set the political agenda, but we need to reduce their power. This won’t be easy though. It is likely that hey will quickly point out that for an election to be fair, the vote must be both secret and free. How can we guarantee that if people vote at home? They could be compelled to vote in a certain way by their spouse, boss or a special interest group. It is a difficult problem but with the technology available to us (digital certificates and biometrics) we should start the debate.