Two statistics: 1,000,000,000/8,000,000,000

I drew attention last year to the fact that 1,000,000,000 Indians were eligible to vote in the recent elections in that country. (And it seems to have been a reasonably honest election as things go these days.) It is generally accepted that the human population is about 8 billion.

I don't quite know what to think about this, but it seems to be worth thinking about.

IMAGE: If your serious about democracy, you have to work hard to make it real.

It is not to laugh

Karl Sharro in Politico says, "America, you look like an Arab country right now." Excerpts:

Dear America,
We have been watching the drama of your presidential elections with much interest and curiosity for some time now. It’s hard not to notice the many similarities between our own countries and yours. From fiery inauguration protests and bitter disputes about crowd size, to the intelligence service’s forays into politics and the rise of right-wing extremists, it appears that you are traveling very much in our direction—and at the same time, like us, becoming a curiosity for foreign correspondents trying to explain what’s happening in your region to the world. You might be distraught about where you are headed, but we aren’t! Perhaps this will be an opportunity to put our differences aside and recognize how similar we are.
Let’s start at the beginning. During the campaign we were surprised to learn of the influence that the head of the American mukhabarat (state security, i.e. your FBI) can wield over the election process, simply by choosing to pursue a certain line of investigation. As you may know, this has been a constant feature of our politics since independence. Our surprise turned to astonishment when we started to witness the blossoming feud between the then-president-elect and the American mukhabarat, another important feature of Arab politics.
On top of that, we started to hear reports of foreign meddling in your elections, which some say may have influenced the result. Of course, we are quite familiar with that situation, too, not least because of the efforts of your own administrations over the decades. Yet it came as a surprise to hear talk of “foreign hands” and “secret agendas” in a country like America. We sympathize.

...

The moment at which we felt real solidarity with the American people, though, was when we started hearing BBC reporters talking to your citizens with the patronizing tone they normally reserve for the Middle East. Correspondents were sent to far-flung corners of the United States to talk to farmers and factory workers to try to understand how they feel and to ask condescending questions. I’m from the British Broadcasting Corporation, are you familiar with the BBC? Where do you get your news from? Do you feel angry? Does religion play a role in how you are voting?. (The only thing missing were pictures of people with blue ink on their thumbs; please consider introducing that practice in the future.)

Makes the case

A dissent from the Globe and Mail's endorsement:  Anyone but Harper.

Rick Mercer on the campaign -- Is Stephen Harper a hologram?

Asked by someone who followed him around in person.

There's much more well worth reading, it's a substantial piece.

Vote mobs

From the Ottawa Citizen: 
[Emphasis and Rick Mercer link SM]

In his April 22 column, “Vote Mob Mentality”, Michael Taube has insulted Canadian youth, and in my view as a participant, he has mischaracterized the nature and goals of campus Vote Mobs.
First of all, let’s lay one thing to rest: Comedian Rick Mercer was only the indirect inspiration for Vote Mobs.

The only thing Rick did was look us in the eye (us being the 18-25-year-old crowd) and appeal to us directly. “Vote,” he said, and that was all. The Vote Mob was conceived by students at the University of Guelph, and is, as Mercer himself said, “a perfect example of young people doing things in a brand new way.” They are not merely “a fun, easy and cheap way to get our youth interested in politics,” as Taube would have it.

They are also not an excuse to “put on some music, dress in matching costumes, paint [our] face[es], and make pointless YouTube videos.” Honestly Mr. Taube, do you think I need an excuse to do that? Because I could do that in my living room. I certainly didn’t go out into the cold in the middle of exam week because I had nothing better to do. In fact, let’s pause on that last note. All Vote Mob videos were filmed and edited during April, which is exam month for students.

This did lead to lower turnouts at the mobs, but the students who came out and participated in these videos represent the diehards, the enthusiasts, the political-junkies. They will not, I guarantee you, be staying home on May 2. Furthermore, the lack of partisan support in the Vote Mobs is not an indication of our lack of knowledge. It’s simply that non-partisanship was our rule. And to Taube’s question: “Do you really think any of the major leaders honestly cares that some 18-25-year-olds who wouldn’t ordinarily vote have suddenly been convinced by a comedian’s rant on TV?”

In a word, sir, No. The vote mobs, Mr. Taube, Mr. Harper, Mr./Ms. Member of Parliament, are not for you. They’re for me. For us. For the 18-25-year-old crowd. We’re not convincing you, we’re convincing ourselves. We’re convincing ourselves that we really do matter and that we really do have potential political clout. We also mob to remind ourselves, and to tell other youth, that we are the problem. The fact that our political power goes unrealized is a problem only we created and only we can solve. Politicians don’t listen because we don’t vote. When we dance, scream, and yell “VOTE!” we’re not talking to you, Sir, we’re talking to each other.

I don’t really care whether or not the party leaders see our video. What I want is for youth across Canada to see it. They’re the reason I left my books in the library to go out in the cold and jump around, not you, not the adults, not the political leaders.

I find it incredibly sad that some see Vote Mobs as an indication of something wrong with either youth or Canada. If we were protesting anything, it was apathy. If we were celebrating anything, it was Canada and democracy. In light of events across the world, for example, the protests in Egypt, 300 young Canadians rallying in front of their school, singing O Canada and waving signs that say “Vote” is an indication of all that’s right in Canada.

Finally, Mr. Taube, let me address your statement that, “while no one is expecting all young people to have PhD-level understanding of the Canadian political system, a decent amount of knowledge would be nice.” What a blatant insult to the intelligence of Canadian youth everywhere.

Until my peers vote en masse, I don’t expect attention. But I do expect — from both my politicians and my newspapers — common courtesy. You have failed in this simplest of tasks, proving that youth are not as dumb as you make them out to be. We at least know when we’re being insulted.

Michelle Reddick is a third-year student at McGill University and a vote-mob participant.

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/vote/4678398/story.html#ixzz1KlEGrZiN

A timely meditation on democracy

Phil Paine wrote a provocative "Seventh Meditation on Democracy" during the last federal election in Canada.  For this one, I'm reposting this excerpt (or you can read the whole thing here):

A few days ago, I was in the sub­way, and I over­heard a con­ver­sa­tion about our cur­rent national elec­tion. Two boys who, from their appear­ance, could have been no fur­ther along in school than grade nine or ten, were dis­cussing the tele­vised debates between the lead­ers of the five major polit­i­cal par­ties. What struck me, as I lis­tened in, was that the dis­cus­sion was cogent and intel­li­gent. One of the boys, who seemed the youngest, was par­tic­u­larly artic­u­late, and his opin­ions were not the sim­ple par­rot­ing of some adult he had heard, or the pur­suit of a party line. In fact, his analy­sis of the debate showed keener obser­va­tion and judg­ment than that of the pro­fes­sional com­men­ta­tors who dis­sected the debate after the broad­cast.

Now, I’m sure that these were excep­tional kids. It’s unlikely that there are many in their age group who share their inter­ests and skills. But it’s a sign that there is some­thing going on, under the sur­face of our soci­ety, that you would never guess by watch­ing tele­vi­sion or read­ing a news­pa­per. I grew up in a fam­ily where national and provin­cial pol­i­tics were argued at the din­ner table with gusto, and I have a clear mem­ory of the issues in an elec­tion held when I was ten years old. That was prob­a­bly an excep­tional envi­ron­ment. But I did not have access to the wealth of infor­ma­tion now avail­able on the inter­net. No amount of clev­er­ness is very use­ful if you have poor infor­ma­tion, so my capac­ity to ana­lyze was lim­ited. I doubt that I could have matched the sophis­ti­ca­tion demon­strated by the kids in the sub­way. Many peo­ple, of any age, are still prey to the tra­di­tional tools of obfus­ca­tion, button-pushing and appeals to prej­u­dice that politi­cians have suc­cess­fully deployed for cen­turies. How­ever, if some­one is fairly sharp, and raised with the infor­ma­tion tools now avail­able, they have a good chance of see­ing through these strat­a­gems. So you can expect there to start appear­ing a layer of young peo­ple who are rel­a­tively immune to the kind of silly-ass cam­paign­ing that our cur­rent gov­ern­ment relies upon. It will be very inter­est­ing to see what hap­pens when that layer of peo­ple, who were born with the inter­net, grows up and walks into the poll-booth. They will be dis­plac­ing a gen­er­a­tion that grew up with the much more pas­sive and homo­ge­neous medium of television.

One of the results may be that the elec­torate does some grow­ing up in a psy­cho­log­i­cal, as well as a phys­i­cal sense. One of the chief points that I’ve tried to put across in my “med­i­ta­tions on democ­racy” is that the core con­cept of democ­racy is self-respect. Self-respect is man­i­fested, in a healthy mind, by a will­ing­ness to take on the respon­si­bil­i­ties of an adult when one becomes an adult. The prin­ci­pal respon­si­bil­ity that an adult has is to gov­ern them­self. A child is born help­less, and must at first be con­trolled and guided by par­ents, in order to sur­vive at all. But, as the child grows older, the car­ing par­ent relin­quishes one aspect of con­trol after another, until adult­hood is reached, and the child becomes autonomous and self-governing. That is com­mon sense, under­stood by most peo­ple on the indi­vid­ual level. How­ever, on the level of col­lec­tive action, on the level of soci­ety, that com­mon sense les­son is rarely understood.

When peo­ple dis­cussing pol­i­tics talk about “lead­er­ship”, you know that they are encased in a prim­i­tive, pre-logical, and infan­tile state of mind. Peo­ple who seek lead­ers are sim­ply not grown up, and peo­ple who advance the claim of Lead­er­ship are attempt­ing to keep adults in a state of per­pet­ual child­hood. If to be an adult means to gov­ern one­self, then no adult should be seek­ing a “leader”. The pur­pose of democ­racy is not to “select a leader”. It is to select poli­cies. The mech­a­nism of democ­racy is not intended to choose some­one to gov­ern the peo­ple, but for the peo­ple to gov­ern them­selves. In ratio­nal demo­c­ra­tic thought, office hold­ers are not “lead­ers”, they are ser­vants. The pur­pose of an elec­tion is to 1) choose a pol­icy of admin­is­tra­tion and an over­all plan, 2) assign peo­ple to the rel­e­vant tasks, and 3) make sure they do what they are told to do. “Lead­er­ship” does not come into it. Vot­ers are not sup­posed to be “led”, they are sup­posed to be in charge. The last per­son I want to see hold pub­lic office is some strut­ting alpha-ape who claims the right to tell me what to do. If I see some­one run­ning for office who is flaunt­ing dom­i­nance sig­nals, claim­ing to have “vision” and telling me I need “lead­er­ship”, then my healthy, sane, adult response is to want to see such an ass­hole slapped down, hum­bled, and kicked out of pub­lic life. I want to see them replaced with some com­pe­tent per­son who will faith­fully carry out the instruc­tions they are given by the peo­ple. I am an adult, and a free man, so any­one who dares to claim to be my “leader” earns noth­ing but my con­tempt. My fun­da­men­tal her­itage as a Cana­dian is that the only legit­i­mate leader of me is me.

Cana­di­ans are sup­posed to know this. We are not some back­ward tribe of sav­ages danc­ing around a golden calf and wait­ing for a crack­pot Mes­siah to tell us what to do. We are sup­posed to be grown up enough not to be impressed by a tai­lored suit, a jut­ting jaw, or a man­u­fac­tured pub­lic­ity image. The polit­i­cal sys­tem we have built, slowly and pru­dently, out of dis­parate tra­di­tional sources — England’s slowly evolved par­lia­ment, New England’s town meet­ings, native Cana­dian coun­cils, the long fight for uni­ver­sal fran­chise, notions of auton­omy, indi­vid­ual rights, social equal­ity, and self-rule — should not be per­mit­ted to lapse into some kind of mys­ti­cal monar­chy, after all our strug­gles. That is pre­cisely why, in our sys­tem, the prime min­is­ter is not the head of state, and his or her gov­ern­ment can be called to account at any time, or dis­solved by a vote of no-confidence. In fact, the pres­ence of a prime min­is­ter is a mere super­sti­tious holdover, an arti­fact of prim­i­tive hier­ar­chi­cal thought that is fun­da­men­tally incom­pat­i­ble with democracy.

The only valid func­tion of a prime min­is­ter in our sys­tem is to “form a gov­ern­ment”, i.e. to select a cab­i­net and over­see the admin­is­tra­tion of what­ever laws the assem­bled par­lia­ment chooses to pass. Oth­er­wise, he is merely a min­is­ter like any other, elected to rep­re­sent his local rid­ing. It is the assem­bled mem­bers of par­lia­ment who are sup­posed to be mak­ing deci­sions, not the prime min­is­ter. A par­lia­ment can func­tion bet­ter with­out the office, and if we man­age to evolve our sys­tem fur­ther, it will even­tu­ally be abolished.

Peo­ple con­sis­tently con­fuse (because they have been encour­aged to con­fuse) a polit­i­cal party with gov­ern­ment. But a party is merely a pri­vate asso­ci­a­tion of cit­i­zens, some hold­ing office and some not, that sup­pos­edly shares some par­tic­u­lar opin­ions about pol­icy. Mem­bers of par­lia­ment may choose to belong to a polit­i­cal party, but their role in par­lia­ment is to pro­pose, debate, and vote on leg­is­la­tion for the well­be­ing of the coun­try, as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of their con­stituents. They are not sup­posed to be cogs or func­tionar­ies of what­ever party they belong to, and they are sup­posed to be answer­able to the elec­torate, not to their party lead­er­ship. The fact that Stephen Harper, the cur­rent prime min­is­ter, is the leader of his party (a pri­vate orga­ni­za­tion) should never be con­fused with the fact that he has been instructed by the Head of State, Michaëlle Jean, to select a cab­i­net and carry out pub­lic administration.

But what, in this sys­tem, actu­ally neces­si­tates there being a prime min­is­ter?

Democracy abused in Canada -- too much even for the National Post

It's Harper, of course.  Matt Gurney tells the story:

During a stop last Sunday in London, a 19-year-old political science student at the nearby University of Western Ontario, Awish Aslam, joined a Conservative rally where the Prime Minister was to speak. She registered online (as did a friend who accompanied her) and upon arrival, signed in and went inside. After 30 minutes or so inside the event, both women were approached by a man who asked them to follow him. He took their name tags, tore them up and escorted them out of the event. His explanation, according to Aslam: “[He told us,] ‘We know you guys have ties to the Liberal party through Facebook.’ He said . . . ‘You are no longer welcome here.’”

The ties to the Liberal party? Michael Ignatieff had already made a stop in London, and Aslam had attended that rally, too. At the event, she had her photo taken with the Liberal leader, and posted it on Facebook. According to Aslam, she intended to visit every party’s rally. This is the first election in which she is eligible to vote, and clearly, she has an interest in politics. Exposing herself to a wide variety of views and opinions is entirely logical, and something we need to encourage more young voters to do — make informed political choices, get involved in the process, and value the right to vote in its proper context as the civic duty of a knowledgeable citizen. Aslam was entirely within her right as a citizen to meet with Mr. Ignatieff, and then Mr. Harper. It is unconscionable that anyone on the Harper campaign team felt otherwise.

Are people with “ties” to the Liberal party to be treated like the enemy and expelled from events? Obviously, the Prime Minister needs security. But it’s supposed to be security against threats to his life, not security against ever having to be near someone who took a photo with a politician from a different party. Unless, of course, it’s Conservative policy that anyone who has been in direct proximity to Ignatieff is a national security risk.

You have been warned.

Image:  The mortal danger of young democracy.

Canadian politics in a quip

Over at mightygodking.com:

"It is worth explaining that Jean Chretien embodied one of the central principles of Canadian politics, which is that for all that the world thinks of us as nice and polite, we inevitably vote for whichever political leader seems like the most capable bastard. Chretien was a ridiculously capable bastard."

Just one insight from  A Guide to the Upcoming Canadian Election for Foreigners.

Afghans speak about the Afghan election

In an amazing good piece from the New York Times' blog At War, Afghans (men, no women) express their various opinions about the recent election and the country's situation in general. And various those opinions are. If your country has troops in Afghanistan, you owe it to yourself and them to read this relatively short account.

One thing that really caught my eye were the differing evaluations that two interviewees expressed on elections themselves. Have a look at this:

Sardar Mohammad
Aged 31, from Helmand Province.

Did you vote? “No. There is no security. In fact the election is not being held there. There are Taliban, they don’t let the polling boxes reach there.”

Was it a free and fair election? “No, no, no. It is to benefit America’s private interests. They have captured the whole country. America came to capture Afghanistan to oppress Afghans.”

Would you have voted if you had the chance? “No, never. Islam doesn’t accept the infidel’s democracy, Islam has its own law, God’s book.”

And then at this:

Abdul Khalil
Teacher. Aged 60.

Was it a free and fair election? “It was not a good election. There was fraud in this election, and it was not a fair or good election because there was low turnout. A lot of people did not go to vote. Firstly, because of the Taliban, and secondly, because of our traditions many Afghan women could not go out to vote. Our tradition is that our women never go to vote, men go but not women.

“This is not a good tradition, in my opinion, but for us Afghans this tradition has been laid down for us by our fathers and grandfathers, so we have just continued living like this.

“In the last election there was fraud, and this time also. I heard it on the media, and everyone knows it is true. It is clear that there was fraud. The last time when [Yunous] Qanooni was a candidate, there was fraud. He couldn’t win the election, and this time as well.”

As he spoke his, pro-Karzai, fellow Pashtuns heckled him for being a dissenter, shouting “he’s crazy.”

Sardar Mohammed from war-torn, Taliban-influenced Helmand province appears to have bought into a fairly common Islamist meme; but Abdul Khalil (from Jalalabad? Kabul?) see things differently. He believes that there has been a tradition of elections in the country where men voted and women didn't (a bad tradition, he thinks). What elections does he mean? I can think of only three national elections in Afghanistan, two since the invasion and one in the 1960s. Does he also count some kind of local elections? Have there been a number of separate provincial elections? Anyone who knows more about this than I do, please chime in.

Image: Abdul Khalil.