Icelanders approve their crowd-sourced constitution
Iceland’s citizens were given a chance to help forge a new constitution for their country through Facebook and Twitter, so it’s not surprising that they backed the resulting draft. Now it’s over to the politicians.
Well at least my favorite candidate is not handcuffed to a chair for tonight’s debate. Tonight’s debate is proceeding in the wake of a court challenge by Green Party Candidate Jill Stein. Here is the latest from her campaign:
Last week Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein was arrested, along with VP candidate Cheri Honkala, attempting to get into the presidential debates in Hempstead, New York. This week her fight continues with a lawsuit filed today against the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), claiming that the CPD, Democratic National Committee, and Republican National Committee, together with the Federal Election Commission and Lynn University, had deprived her of her constitutional rights to due process, equal protection, and free speech, as well as her statutorily protected civil rights.
Rick is the founder of the first Pirate Party and is a political evangelist, traveling around Europe and the world to talk and write about ideas of a sensible information policy. He has a tech entrepreneur background and loves whisky.
While the US invasion of Iraq about a decade ago was based on public-facing lies about nonexistent weapons arsenals, the underlying reasons for the invasion were much more dire. Iraq had found the US’ Achilles Heel, and would bankrupt the US if not stopped.
Anna is the Party Leader of the Swedish Pirate Party and a writer. She has previously worked as manager of a book publishing house, and lives in Järfälla with her girlfriend and several cats and dogs. When not planning how to fix the world, she can be seen writing something.
Anna Troberg
I never intended to become a politician. I most certainly never intended to become a party leader. I did, however, have the desire to change the world for the better. I was never one for small ambitions. But being a self confessed literary snob, I expected to change the world with nothing less than literary finesse. The mere thought of picking up an unrefined and blunt tool like politics… The horror. The horror.
However, life rarely turns out the way you expect it to. Some years ago I became the head of the Swedish branch of a Nordic publishing house. We mainly published fiction. But the world of publishing is not all it is cracked up to be. I attended publishing meetings where publishing decisions were made based on the cup size of the author. Big cups meant a signed contract. Small cups meant no contract at all.
It is harder to organise a political movement to help young people than old people. Young people are less susceptible to being organised and they lack the patience for the hard graft of a long political campaign. They are more likely to be seduced by the weak ties of social networking and the false promise of slogans like ‘We are the 99 per cent.’ Nonetheless, these are the victims who need the most help and who lack the clout or visibility to be heard among the more pressing demands being made by the more militant elderly. They are the 5 per cent and we should do something for them.
London Review of Books has an excellent critical analysis by David Runciman of the Occupy movement and the 99% versus 1% narrative.
So how were we duped? Mainly by not paying attention. The 1 per cent didn’t conspire to rip everyone else off. They got their way by walking through the door we left open for them. We were too distracted and disorganised among ourselves to put up enough resistance. What the 99 per cent have in common is that they don’t have enough in common to make a difference politically, compared to the very rich, who are a well-organised bunch. The 99 per cent are a lot more numerous than the 1 per cent; they are also a lot more divided, and it’s the second fact that counts.
Seeking to reshape a national political debate he finds frustratingly superficial, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York is plunging into the 2012 campaign in its final weeks, creating his own “super PAC” to direct millions of dollars in donations to elect candidates from both parties who he believes will focus on problem solving.
Mr. Bloomberg, a billionaire and a registered independent, expects to spend from $10 million to $15 million of his money in highly competitive state, local and Congressional races. The money would be used to pay for a flurry of advertising on behalf of Republican, Democratic and independent candidates who support three of his biggest policy initiatives: legalizing same-sex marriage, enacting tougher gun laws and overhauling schools.
Phi Beta Iota: Bloomberg could have been president in 2012, but his “tribe” may have made clear to him that the cost to him and his family would be very high. His existing three-ring circus (IndependentVoting.org, NO LABELS, and Americans Elect) has consumed vast amounts of money with nothing tangible to show for it EXCEPT (and perhaps the whole point) a severe dilution of small party effectiveness. This fourth ring is absurd–nothing more than a means of cherry-picking a critical mass that can be brought together for a handful of “favors” in the future. There appears to be a real lack of integrity and coherence in this latest move by Bloomberg. Opportunity lost. Again.
