stash of $
Soft money, hard truths
One of the key issues for global governance is the separation of the electoral process in the United States from the private funding of the electoral system, said Professor David Held in openDemocracy's keynote debate on Globalisation. The Diary takes this up again this week, with more news on US campaign finance.
As efforts continue to change the law from the bottom-up, local before federal, the Washington Post reported this week that several Democratic officials cite a troubling drop in contributions from disaffected groups. It seems the Democrats are short of cash.
How can this be? Well there are a number of factors, spreading from economy-nerves to Clinton not selling bedrooms in the White House no more. But it seems that the main problem is the party's limp opposition to Bush's war plans. Our liberal base wants us to stand up and challenge Bush on the war, says Donna Brazile, who runs the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute and managed Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign. Those on low-incomes, women, blacks and liberal suburbanites, are all feeling increasingly ignored: no one is talking to us, no one is addressing our issues.
For the past few weeks, Maryland sniper aside, the news has been focused on Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. Good for Bush. Bad for the Democrats. With opposition to the war scarcely present at the national level, and economic, healthcare and schools issues off the agenda, the Democrats are having a hard time of it. And they are being hit where it hurts most: their pocket.
Party officials say that direct-mail donations fell sharply in August and September. A Democratic strategist was quoted as saying, Democratic donors want the leadership to fight harder on Iraq. Instead, people see Democrats are not raising questions. The Post reports that 76% of those who strongly disapprove of Bush are opposed to America going to war in Iraq. But as a fund-raising specialist says, if the party is not doing that, it causes some problems.
The long-term prospects are not good. Beginning 6 November, a new campaign finance law will prohibit the parties from raising soft money, large contributions from unions, corporations and rich people. Democrats rely on this money even more than Republicans. They need their support base to come out signing those cheques.
Will the Democrats be forced to consider greater campaign finance reform? Watch this space
Cuban Missile Crisis
Thirteen days, forty years
15 October marks the fortieth anniversary of the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This week a special conference was held in Havana, organised by George Washington University. The tale still has a twist.
Present at the conference were politicians, military figures and academics from Cuba, Russia and the US, including former US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Cuban leader Fidel Castro, the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Kennedy aides Theodore Sorenson and Richard Goodwin, Ethel Kennedy, wife of Bobby, and Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Georgi Konyenko. Many were meeting for the first time.
It emerged at the conference that the world was much closer to nuclear war than had previously been thought. Much closer. Newly declassified documents revealed that on 27 October 1962 a US Navy destroyer dropped depth charges that exploded right next to the hull of a Soviet submarine armed with a nuclear weapon. The US military did not have a clue that the submarine had a nuclear weapon on board, said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archives. In a written account of the incident, Vadim Orlov, the submarine's signals intelligence officer, said They exploded right next to the hull. The crew members thought that war had broken out and readied themselves to use the nuclear weapon.
Orlov recounts that the world came within one word of nuclear Armageddon. Use of the weapon required the authorisation of three of the submarines officers. Two wanted to fire. The other said no.
A guy named Arkhipov saved the world, says Blanton.
SA-2 missile site showing characteristic Star of David pattern - see here. Click for bigger image
Fortunately, the submarine surfaced. As Arthur Schlesinger said, This was not only the most dangerous moment of the cold war. It was the most dangerous moment in human history.
The organisers tried to strike parallels with the current crisis over Iraq, insisting lessons in diplomacy could be learned. It was the best managed foreign policy crisis of the last fifty years, McNamara said. But the White House is likely to see this as a meeting of old-school advocates of containment those who will dine with Castro.
The Diary has a niggling feeling that Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush lack the diplomatic qualities of the Kennedy White House. Forty years was a long, long time ago.
Buddhist bikinis
There is something irresistible, not to say deeply symbolic, about beauty contests. A few months ago, the Diary highlighted the trouble that the Miss World contest was bringing to Nigeria. Last week, in his first Globolog, Caspar Henderson followed the story up, identifying the changing shape of Nigerian women.
Now, another beauty pageant, this time for the crown of Miss Tibet, has caused a new stir. Held in Dharamsala, India (the seat of Tibet's government-in-exile), the contest was closed to the public, but the media were allowed to ogle the swimsuit round.
But there has been a mass of local opposition. The exiled Tibetan community are known for their conservatism. The last the Diary heard, only four contestants out of the original thirty remained. The BBC says that, The others are said to have dropped out due to pressure from friends and members of the community who have lambasted the contest for not being in keeping with Tibetan culture.
The complainants suggest that swimsuit parades have violated Tibetan traditions and trivialised the fight for freedom. Perhaps they haven't heard how well world peace fared on the recommendation of the Miss World contestants.
But a Miss Tibet judge felt differently. A little bit of glamour attached to the Tibetan cause will do it some good, said Shailja Katoch. Lobsang Wangyal, one of the pageant organisers, defended the competition as designed to highlight the Tibetan identity. People have been talking about swimsuits, he said, and they say it's un-Tibetan or un-Buddhist. But we say Buddhism doesnt reject this kind of thing.
After all, the contest is not just an excuse for skimpy outfits. Mr Wangyal promises a round in which the hopefuls will speak on Tibetan history, culture and current affairs. In another round, they will wear traditional Tibetan costume.
But opponents come at all levels. The Prime Minister in exile, Samdhong Rinpoche reluctant to dive into the debate is, however, said to be thoroughly unimpressed.
Air China takes off
Capitalism, Chinese style
Chinese communism, that strange beast, looked increasingly like capitalist autocracy this week when it was announced that China's nine biggest airlines are to merge and shares in Air China will be floated on the international stock market.
Mao would be ecstatic.
But business is business, even for the imminent Fourth Generation. As BBC Online says Chinas airlines have bucked the global industry slump after the 11 September attacks in the US last year and are reporting record bookings from an increasingly wealthy and mobile population.
Air China will merge with China Southwest Airlines and China Aviation to create a company with 57.3billion yuan ($6.94billion) in assets, twenty-two thousand employees, and one hundred and eighteen aircraft serving three hundred and seven routes. The new look Air China plans to expand its fleet by more than two hundred aircraft by 2010 and, eventually, will list on overseas stock markets.
Is Marxism finally taking off?
Lifelong learning?
The History of Spies. From Churchill to Princess Di: British Post-war Culture. Are our Worst Modern Ailments Avoidable?
No, not forthcoming debates on openDemocracy, but a selection of the university courses now available online. An article in the International Herald Tribune (IHT) reported on the growing number of online degrees available as Top universities shed cyber wariness.
The richest thing about going to a university campus is living and working in a community of other learners where the only activity is learning, said Andrew Rosenfield of Cardean University in Chicago. But our challenge is to help people who are also struggling to raise a family and hold a job. Cardean has based its coursework on a consortium with the University of Chicago, Columbia, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and the London School of Economics, and last month admitted its first class of candidates for an all-virtual MBA degree. The course costs $24,000 whopping, but much less than if you actually attended the schools in person.
Universities such as Phoenix have pioneered this new way of learning and the bug is spreading. The ,a href=http://www.allianceforlifelonglearning.org/ target=_blnak>Alliance for Lifelong Learning, operated by the University of Oxford, Stanford and Yale, is now available to anyone. OK, so you don't get a degree, but the universities will give you a certificate saying you took the course. The point is that access to the courses is available.
As the IHT admits, e-education is in its infancy. But it is growing and it is very much alive.
Quotes of the week (from the US)
Frankly, the Democratic message is We support Bush in the war on terrorism. That is not going to turn out anybody. Un-named Democratic party operative worrying about voter turnout in the forthcoming US mid-term elections.
Willing and prepared to use the force necessary to prevail, plus some. What the United States must be to foil an attack on itself, according to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a memorandum written in March 2001, and updated as recently as this weekend (New York Times). Said Rumsfeld about the memo: I pick it up and read it every couple of months when something comes up.
This document really makes you feel very, very comfortable and very good that these are tick points that he's using for those kind of decisions. General Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Rumsfeld memo.
To advise me on making sure the messages I want to communicate to our constituencies are in fact articulated as well as I can do so. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman (and Diary favourite) Harvey Pitt, explaining why he has employed Anne Womack, a White House press aide. Womack, who was an assistant of Ari Fleischer, was a staunch defender of Pitt when speaking for the White House. Bush rejected a joint call for Pitt's resignation this week from Richard Gephart and Tom Daschle, calling it a political charge that has no merit or substance.
There is no market for a dedicated new-economy publication. Moni Begley, a spokeswoman for Forbes, quoted in the NYT. (Yikes!)
Readers' Responses
-A British Liberal Democrat corrects David Fine:
Dear Sir or Madam,
I was surprised to read that David Fine did not think rural issues were not discussed at the Liberal Democrat conference last month (The Creative Economy Goes Rural, 10 October 2002).
The countryside was very much on the agenda, with the launch and debate on our Rural Futures policy document on the Monday. The paper was the culmination of a year-long review of the party's rural policies. Not only did it offer our thoughts on the future of farming, it also dealt with the broader concerns of country people, including public service provision and help for small businesses.
For those who would like to read the Rural Futures policy paper in more detail, it can be accessed from the Liberal Democrat website (click here).
Yours sincerely,
Guy Burton
Adviser on Rural and Cultural Affairs
Liberal Democrats
-A reader from Boston takes issue with Roger Scruton:
I read with interest Roger Scruton's 'When is a Popular Protest not Popular', and found myself in partial agreement.
But only partial. Although I am neither Lent nor Jordan, I would like to address Scruton's closing 'test case' from my personal democratic ethos:
"So here is the test case for people such as Lent and Jordan: will you fight as vehemently for our right to hunt foxes as you are prepared to fight for gay rights? If not, why not?"
My answer is No. I would not fight for anyone's right to hunt foxes.
Why not? Because I don't value the sort of 'democracy' in which the powerful are free to exploit the powerless. I feel quite sure the fox hunters, too, would take the gravest exception to being hunted in their turn. If their right to hunt foxes were conditioned on their submitting to being hunted by, oh, the military, I haven't the least doubt that they would choose to stay home. Killing things is only fun when one isn't the killee.
Democracy is - or should be - about each of us being able to do what we wish with our own lives, neither interfering nor being interfered with. To ensure that right to ourselves, we must ensure it to all other mammals at least, because if we try special pleading about how we're a superior sort of mammal because of intelligence or (Goddess forefend!) religious dogma, we're on a hiding to nowhere. For there'll always be some nitwit who can claim to be superior to "us" on the grounds of being bigger or richer or better looking or some other factor. Which is, not coincidentally, where we are today. And it's a mess.
Mairead MacDonald
Boston
-And another reader is similarly unconvinced...
"Will you fight as vehemently for our right to hunt foxes as you are prepared to fight for gay rights?" asks Roger Scruton.
I'm tired of hearing the lines that are constantly thrown out, 'individual liberty is at stake' and 'we have a right to hunt'. Quite frankly, they nauseate me.
Having a 'right' to do something does not make it acceptable. There is nothing acceptable about chasing an animal until it is dead. What is most important here is to understand that, we as humans can and must move forward in the belief that human society will do the same. Banning hunting does impinge on those few who participate, but it is also representative of the views held by the majority that what you are doing is hideously uncivilised, but how does one make a path between the wants of the few and the wants of the many without stomping on a minority? After all, democracy's legacy is that it has given us rights, but then disallowed them to be used when it does not suit.
The answer lies in concluding that hunting does not belong in a society that pertains to be civilised. It is a marker of how we once were, how we can and must change and how we want our society to be. That of course means moving away from the notion that just because something 'is' or 'was' should be how it is forever. Owning slaves was once a 'right' as was/is working children until they dropped, but recognition that it is unacceptable is the starting point from which all else follows.
So Mr Scruton, I will not be supporting your supposed right to hunt and I will do so by demonstrating, protesting and discussion, in the hope that you and your like-minded compatriots will eventually develop your thinking and recognise that your interest in hunting is representative of your inability to join a more compassionate world. Your analogy of campaigning for gay rights with that of hunting does little more than display a complete disregard for vulnerability, in all its forms. The campaign for gay rights is about the genuine rights, not wants, of those that should be accepted in society for the people they are, your campaign to carry on hunting is about the disregarding of compassion, life (yes, I do mean the fox, you do not have the 'right' to take its life away because you fancy releasing some adrenaline, however you dress it up, this is what it boils down to) and a way of living that means our society becomes stuck in the me-me attitude that has held us up for so long. It's time to move on Mr Scruton, live and let live, but don't forget to display that hidden human attribute: compassion. It's even hiding somewhere in the people of the Countryside Alliance.
One more thing, you suggest that by only campaigning for causes such as feminism, gay rights and racism etc. that it is somehow a failing on our part to recognise that issues that affect people, like fox-hunting are as worthy as the ones mentioned above, because rights are rights and by picking and choosing, they become as you put it, 'a politics without principle'. This in mind, I expect to see you on the next anti-hunt march.
Regards,
Laura McMenemy
