By MORRIS D. DAVIS
New York Times
Arlington, Va.
LINDSEY GRAHAM, a Republican senator from South Carolina, is right: “The image of Guantánamo Bay and the reality of Guantánamo Bay are completely different.” It is disappointing that so many embrace a contrived image. Reality for Guantánamo Bay is the daily professionalism of its staff, the humanity of its detention centers and the fair and transparent nature of the military commissions charged with trying war criminals. It is a reality that has been all but ignored or forgotten.
The makeshift detention center known as Camp X-Ray closed in early 2002 after just four months of use. Now it is overgrown with weeds and serves as home to iguanas. Yet last week ABC News published a photo online of Camp X-Ray as if it were in use, five years after its closing.
Today, most of the detainees are housed in new buildings modeled after civilian prisons in Indiana and Michigan. Detainees receive three culturally appropriate meals a day. Each has a copy of the Koran. Guards maintain respectful silence during Islam’s five daily prayer periods, and medical care is provided by the same practitioners who treat American service members. Detainees are offered at least two hours of outdoor recreation each day, double that allowed inmates, including convicted terrorists, at the “supermax” federal penitentiary in Florence, Colo.
Standards at Guantánamo rival or exceed those at similar institutions in the United States and abroad. After an inspection by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in March 2006, a Belgian police official said, “At the level of detention facilities, it is a model prison, where people are better treated than in Belgian prisons.”
Critics liken Guantánamo Bay to Soviet gulags, but reality does not match their hyperbole. The supporters of David Hicks, the detainee popularly known as the “Australian Taliban,” asserted that Mr. Hicks was mistreated and wasting away. But at his March trial, where he pleaded guilty to providing material support to a terrorist organization, he and his defense team stipulated he was treated properly. Mr. Hicks even thanked service members, and as one Australian newspaper columnist noted, he appeared in court “looking fat, healthy and tanned, and cracking jokes.”
Some imply that if a defendant does not get a trial that looks like Martha Stewart’s and ends like O. J. Simpson’s, then military commissions are flawed. They are mistaken. The Constitution does not extend to alien unlawful enemy combatants. They are entitled to protections under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which ensures they are afforded “all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.”
Justice John Paul Stevens, in the Hamdan decision that rejected an earlier plan for military commissions, observed that Article 75 of the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions defines the judicial guarantees recognized as indispensable. A comparison of Article 75 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 shows military commissions provide the fundamental guarantees.
Each accused receives a copy of the charges in his native language; outside influence on witnesses and trial participants is prohibited; the accused may challenge members of the commission; an accused may represent himself or have assistance of counsel; he is presumed innocent until guilt is established beyond a reasonable doubt; he is entitled to assistance to secure evidence on his behalf; he is not required to incriminate himself at trial and his silence is not held against him; he may not be tried a second time for the same offense; and he is entitled to the assistance of counsel through four stages of post-trial appellate review ending at the United States Supreme Court.
One myth is that the accused can be excluded from his trial and convicted on secret evidence. The administrative boards that determine if a detainee is an enemy combatant and whether he is a continuing threat may consider classified information in closed hearings outside the presence of the detainee. But military commissions may not. The act states, “The accused shall be permitted ... to examine and respond to evidence admitted against him on the issue of guilt or innocence and for sentencing.” Unless the accused chooses to skip his trial or is removed for disruptive behavior, he has the right to be present and to confront all of the evidence.
Many critics disapprove of the potential admissibility of evidence obtained by coercion and hearsay. Any statement by a person whose freedom is restrained by someone in a position of authority can be viewed as the product of some degree of coercion. Deciding how far is too far is the challenge. I make the final decision on the evidence the prosecution will introduce. The defense may challenge this evidence and the military judge decides whether it is admitted. If it is admitted, both sides can argue how much weight, if any, the evidence deserves. If a conviction results, the accused has the assistance of counsel in four stages of post-trial appellate review. These are clearly robust safeguards.
The Military Commissions Act says hearsay is admissible unless it is challenged. The party raising the challenge must persuade the military judge that the probative value of the evidence is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the commission, among other reasons. While this standard permits admission of some evidence that would not be admissible in federal courts, the rights afforded Americans are not the benchmark for assessing rights afforded enemy combatants in military tribunals.
There is no ban on hearsay among the indispensable rights listed in the Geneva Conventions. Nor is there a ban on hearsay for the United Nations-sanctioned war crimes tribunals, including the International Criminal Court, the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The Nuremberg trials also did not limit hearsay evidence. Simply stated, a ban on hearsay is not an internationally recognized judicial guarantee.
Guantánamo Bay is a clean, safe and humane place for enemy combatants, and the Military Commissions Act provides a fair process to adjudicate the guilt or innocence of those alleged to have committed crimes. Even the most vocal critics say they do not want to set terrorists free, but they scorn Guantánamo Bay and military commissions and demand alternatives. The facts show the current alternative is worth keeping.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Monday, September 10, 2007
Road kill
By Gregg Easterbrook
August 5, 2007
Suppose 245,000 americans had died in terrorist attacks since Sept. 11, 2001. The United States would be beside itself, utterly gripped by a sense of national emergency. Political leaders would speak of nothing else, the United States military would stand at maximum readiness, and the White House would vow not to rest until the danger to Americans had been utterly eradicated.
Yet 245,000 Americans have died because of one specific threat since 9/11, and no one seems to care. While the tragedy of 3,000 lives lost on 9/11 has justified two wars, in which thousands of U.S. soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice, the tragedy of 245,000 lives lost in traffic accidents on the nation's roads during the same period has justified . . . pretty much no response at all. Terrorism is on the front page day in and day out, but the media rarely even mention road deaths. A few days ago, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced that 42,642 Americans died in traffic in 2006. Did you hear this reported anywhere?
This phenomenon is not just American, it is global. Traffic deaths are the fastest-rising cause of death in the world. Yet you've heard far more about H5N1 avian influenza, which has killed 192 people worldwide since being detected five years ago, than about the 6 million people who have died in traffic accidents in the same period. Last year alone, 1.2 million people were killed on the world's roads, versus about 100,000 dead as a result of combat. The last decade is believed to be the first time in history that roads posed a greater danger to human beings than fighting (which is partly a reflection of the decline of war).
Global prosperity is rising fast, which means that global car ownership is rising fast, and both of those things are good -- but they also mean that global traffic deaths are rising as well. Worldwide, traffic deaths look exactly like a pandemic -- increasing in most nations, with local rapid spikes.
Two forces seem at play in skewed perceptions of these risks. The first is the fundamental difference between harm because of accidents and harm because of deliberate action; the second, society's strange assumption that traffic fatalities cannot be avoided.
The loss of life caused by terrorism on 9/11 -- or similar losses in other acts of terror or war -- has a wholly different moral standing than loss of life in accidents. Terrorists are criminals whose intent is homicide. Those who act illegally or immorally must be opposed even if that means engaging in complex, expensive, perilous undertakings, as the United States has since the darkness of 9/11. A life lost in a traffic accident is very sad, but it does not involve an offense against morality or human dignity. Most traffic accidents are just that -- accidents. In that sense, it may be reasonable that 3,000 deaths because of terrorism have a disproportionate effect on national policymaking.
Next, cars and trucks possess utility. They are vital to our economy and to our personal freedom. Having millions of cars and trucks roaring every which way is necessary for the American economy to be so productive. Environmental Protection Agency figures show that, in the last three decades, vehicle-miles traveled have risen 170% in the United States. Some of this may be unnecessary, but most vehicle-miles happen because they serve someone's interest. If the use of cars were restricted, accidents would certainly decline, but so would economic productivity and personal freedom.
Here's where the big faults in our thinking come into play. Do the media downplay road dangers in part because the auto industry is the No. 1 advertiser on TV and among the top advertisers for newspapers? Detroit would much rather Brian Williams or Katie Couric titter about Paris Hilton, or the L.A. Times feature articles on Waziristan, than hear about 42,642 dead on the roads last year.
Typical Americans are to blame as well. Because we don't want to contemplate dying in a car crash, we seem to assume that highway fatalities cannot be reduced, that they fall into the "stuff happens" category. This isn't so. Risks of driving or of crossing the street -- each year more pedestrians die in the United States than the death toll of 9/11 -- could be reduced significantly without any sacrifice of freedom by car owners.
Relative to passenger-miles traveled, traffic fatalities have declined in the United States owing to anti-lock brakes, air bags, impact engineering (a hidden safety feature of most new vehicles) and the big rise in shoulder-harness use (your seat belt is much more important to safety than air bags). Tougher laws and social awareness have reduced drunk driving. Yet fatalities per mile traveled have not fallen as much as might be expected given improved technology and less alcohol-impaired driving. There appear to be two key reasons: cellphones and horsepower.
Driving while yakking may seem harmless to you, but try telling that to the loved ones of the hundreds or even thousands who die each year in totally avoidable phone-related accidents. Holding a cellphone while driving will become illegal in California in 2008. But the odds of getting stopped are slight. Automated cameras now issue speeding tickets; why can't they issue tickets to owners of cars photographed with a driver using a phone?
Another idea is to pass laws under which, if a driver is on the phone at the moment of a crash, he or she is presumed to be at fault. It is well past time for legislatures to stop waffling on this issue and take action. People make phone calls while driving because they know they can get away with it. This is more important than human life?
The ever-rising horsepower of cars, SUVs and pickup trucks is another reason road fatalities stay high. Twenty years ago, the average new passenger vehicle had 119 horsepower and went from zero to 60 in 13 seconds; this year's averages are 220 horsepower and zero to 60 in 9.5 seconds. New cars, SUVs and pickup trucks of this model year are the "fastest and most powerful vehicles since the EPA began compiling data," the federal agency recently said. Even many new family sedans are ridiculously overpowered. Car & Driver magazine recently tested the new, 268-horsepower Toyota Camry: It did zero to 60 in 5.8 seconds, which was Corvette acceleration a generation ago.
Cars with high horsepower and rapid acceleration are easy to lose control of, especially for young drivers. Tap the accelerator in a tight curve for just an instant in that Camry -- to say nothing of socially irresponsible monstrosities such as the 520-horsepower Porsche Cayenne SUV -- and you can lose control. High-horsepower cars enable cutting off and other forms of aggressive driving; cutting off and sudden lane changes are leading causes of highway collisions. A generation ago, a small percentage of American drivers had high-horsepower vehicles. Now the majority do! Is it a coincidence that road rage and high horsepower have occurred simultaneously? High horsepower makes road rage possible, which in turn adds to the death count.
The proliferation of high horsepower cars is doubly wrong because it links to ever-rising petroleum use and greenhouse gases. Automakers have significantly increased powertrain efficiency in the last 20 years -- but the gains have gone into horsepower, not fuel efficiency. Other things being equal, if new-vehicle horsepower were reduced by one-third, miles per gallon would rise by one-third. One decade of sales of new vehicles with one-third higher horsepower accounts for the amount of oil the United States imports from the Persian Gulf region. Reduce horsepower by a third and end U.S. Persian Gulf oil dependence. Yes, it's that simple. If only we'd actually do it!
Because horsepower is an arms race -- if one automaker offers more, all must -- federal legislation to limit horsepower would offer a good-news trifecta: Higher mpg, reduced greenhouse-gas emissions and lower road fatalities as average motorists stop acting like they're at a NASCAR track.
Why doesn't Congress act to end the horsepower wars? Please don't counter that "no one can tell me what I can drive." The Constitution says you've got a right to own a gun and to read a newspaper. Firearms and materials related to 1st Amendment expression are the only categories of possessions given protected status by the Constitution; courts consistently rule that vehicles on public roads can be regulated for public purposes such as safety.
Horsepower regulation and serious enforcement against cellphone use while driving might save thousands of lives a year. Such reforms might also prevent many billions of dollars in economic losses and make a big dent in the other road-danger figure no one talks about -- 2.6 million Americans injured in traffic crashes last year.
Other reforms, such as pedestrian-activated warning lights at crosswalks, could also reduce traffic deaths in the United States. Numerous reforms could reduce traffic deaths in developing countries. As a nation, we find common ground in agreeing that even one death from terrorism cannot be tolerated. Why are tens of thousands of annual road deaths OK?
Gregg Easterbrook is a fellow of the Brookings Institution and author of "The Progress Paradox." Lauren Hovel of Barnard College provided research assistance for this article.
August 5, 2007
Suppose 245,000 americans had died in terrorist attacks since Sept. 11, 2001. The United States would be beside itself, utterly gripped by a sense of national emergency. Political leaders would speak of nothing else, the United States military would stand at maximum readiness, and the White House would vow not to rest until the danger to Americans had been utterly eradicated.
Yet 245,000 Americans have died because of one specific threat since 9/11, and no one seems to care. While the tragedy of 3,000 lives lost on 9/11 has justified two wars, in which thousands of U.S. soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice, the tragedy of 245,000 lives lost in traffic accidents on the nation's roads during the same period has justified . . . pretty much no response at all. Terrorism is on the front page day in and day out, but the media rarely even mention road deaths. A few days ago, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced that 42,642 Americans died in traffic in 2006. Did you hear this reported anywhere?
This phenomenon is not just American, it is global. Traffic deaths are the fastest-rising cause of death in the world. Yet you've heard far more about H5N1 avian influenza, which has killed 192 people worldwide since being detected five years ago, than about the 6 million people who have died in traffic accidents in the same period. Last year alone, 1.2 million people were killed on the world's roads, versus about 100,000 dead as a result of combat. The last decade is believed to be the first time in history that roads posed a greater danger to human beings than fighting (which is partly a reflection of the decline of war).
Global prosperity is rising fast, which means that global car ownership is rising fast, and both of those things are good -- but they also mean that global traffic deaths are rising as well. Worldwide, traffic deaths look exactly like a pandemic -- increasing in most nations, with local rapid spikes.
Two forces seem at play in skewed perceptions of these risks. The first is the fundamental difference between harm because of accidents and harm because of deliberate action; the second, society's strange assumption that traffic fatalities cannot be avoided.
The loss of life caused by terrorism on 9/11 -- or similar losses in other acts of terror or war -- has a wholly different moral standing than loss of life in accidents. Terrorists are criminals whose intent is homicide. Those who act illegally or immorally must be opposed even if that means engaging in complex, expensive, perilous undertakings, as the United States has since the darkness of 9/11. A life lost in a traffic accident is very sad, but it does not involve an offense against morality or human dignity. Most traffic accidents are just that -- accidents. In that sense, it may be reasonable that 3,000 deaths because of terrorism have a disproportionate effect on national policymaking.
Next, cars and trucks possess utility. They are vital to our economy and to our personal freedom. Having millions of cars and trucks roaring every which way is necessary for the American economy to be so productive. Environmental Protection Agency figures show that, in the last three decades, vehicle-miles traveled have risen 170% in the United States. Some of this may be unnecessary, but most vehicle-miles happen because they serve someone's interest. If the use of cars were restricted, accidents would certainly decline, but so would economic productivity and personal freedom.
Here's where the big faults in our thinking come into play. Do the media downplay road dangers in part because the auto industry is the No. 1 advertiser on TV and among the top advertisers for newspapers? Detroit would much rather Brian Williams or Katie Couric titter about Paris Hilton, or the L.A. Times feature articles on Waziristan, than hear about 42,642 dead on the roads last year.
Typical Americans are to blame as well. Because we don't want to contemplate dying in a car crash, we seem to assume that highway fatalities cannot be reduced, that they fall into the "stuff happens" category. This isn't so. Risks of driving or of crossing the street -- each year more pedestrians die in the United States than the death toll of 9/11 -- could be reduced significantly without any sacrifice of freedom by car owners.
Relative to passenger-miles traveled, traffic fatalities have declined in the United States owing to anti-lock brakes, air bags, impact engineering (a hidden safety feature of most new vehicles) and the big rise in shoulder-harness use (your seat belt is much more important to safety than air bags). Tougher laws and social awareness have reduced drunk driving. Yet fatalities per mile traveled have not fallen as much as might be expected given improved technology and less alcohol-impaired driving. There appear to be two key reasons: cellphones and horsepower.
Driving while yakking may seem harmless to you, but try telling that to the loved ones of the hundreds or even thousands who die each year in totally avoidable phone-related accidents. Holding a cellphone while driving will become illegal in California in 2008. But the odds of getting stopped are slight. Automated cameras now issue speeding tickets; why can't they issue tickets to owners of cars photographed with a driver using a phone?
Another idea is to pass laws under which, if a driver is on the phone at the moment of a crash, he or she is presumed to be at fault. It is well past time for legislatures to stop waffling on this issue and take action. People make phone calls while driving because they know they can get away with it. This is more important than human life?
The ever-rising horsepower of cars, SUVs and pickup trucks is another reason road fatalities stay high. Twenty years ago, the average new passenger vehicle had 119 horsepower and went from zero to 60 in 13 seconds; this year's averages are 220 horsepower and zero to 60 in 9.5 seconds. New cars, SUVs and pickup trucks of this model year are the "fastest and most powerful vehicles since the EPA began compiling data," the federal agency recently said. Even many new family sedans are ridiculously overpowered. Car & Driver magazine recently tested the new, 268-horsepower Toyota Camry: It did zero to 60 in 5.8 seconds, which was Corvette acceleration a generation ago.
Cars with high horsepower and rapid acceleration are easy to lose control of, especially for young drivers. Tap the accelerator in a tight curve for just an instant in that Camry -- to say nothing of socially irresponsible monstrosities such as the 520-horsepower Porsche Cayenne SUV -- and you can lose control. High-horsepower cars enable cutting off and other forms of aggressive driving; cutting off and sudden lane changes are leading causes of highway collisions. A generation ago, a small percentage of American drivers had high-horsepower vehicles. Now the majority do! Is it a coincidence that road rage and high horsepower have occurred simultaneously? High horsepower makes road rage possible, which in turn adds to the death count.
The proliferation of high horsepower cars is doubly wrong because it links to ever-rising petroleum use and greenhouse gases. Automakers have significantly increased powertrain efficiency in the last 20 years -- but the gains have gone into horsepower, not fuel efficiency. Other things being equal, if new-vehicle horsepower were reduced by one-third, miles per gallon would rise by one-third. One decade of sales of new vehicles with one-third higher horsepower accounts for the amount of oil the United States imports from the Persian Gulf region. Reduce horsepower by a third and end U.S. Persian Gulf oil dependence. Yes, it's that simple. If only we'd actually do it!
Because horsepower is an arms race -- if one automaker offers more, all must -- federal legislation to limit horsepower would offer a good-news trifecta: Higher mpg, reduced greenhouse-gas emissions and lower road fatalities as average motorists stop acting like they're at a NASCAR track.
Why doesn't Congress act to end the horsepower wars? Please don't counter that "no one can tell me what I can drive." The Constitution says you've got a right to own a gun and to read a newspaper. Firearms and materials related to 1st Amendment expression are the only categories of possessions given protected status by the Constitution; courts consistently rule that vehicles on public roads can be regulated for public purposes such as safety.
Horsepower regulation and serious enforcement against cellphone use while driving might save thousands of lives a year. Such reforms might also prevent many billions of dollars in economic losses and make a big dent in the other road-danger figure no one talks about -- 2.6 million Americans injured in traffic crashes last year.
Other reforms, such as pedestrian-activated warning lights at crosswalks, could also reduce traffic deaths in the United States. Numerous reforms could reduce traffic deaths in developing countries. As a nation, we find common ground in agreeing that even one death from terrorism cannot be tolerated. Why are tens of thousands of annual road deaths OK?
Gregg Easterbrook is a fellow of the Brookings Institution and author of "The Progress Paradox." Lauren Hovel of Barnard College provided research assistance for this article.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Hanging in the balance
Clive Stafford Smith
May 1, 2007 12:40 PM | Guardian Unlimited
Amnesty International has published its annual report on the death penalty, which makes modestly encouraging reading for those who would put an end to state-sanctioned killing.
This is not surprising: there is little chance that history, as it is ultimately written, will favourably recount stories of electrocution, hanging, gassing or lethal injection, any more than it does burning witches at the stake.
However, this is of little solace to the thousands of individuals who continue to be executed each year, each of whom has only one life to lose.
Consider China. There were 1,010 documented executions last year, but the true number was more likely to have been close to 8,000. Executions in China are shrouded in mystery, we are told, because the fact of an execution is a state secret. Why, if a government wishes to deter its citizens from crime, would the consequences of criminality be kept hidden?
China leads the premier league of executions by a long way, with well over 90% of all executions worldwide. Despite this, there are signs that China is moving towards abolition. In March 2007, a Chinese delegate told the United Nations that he thought "the application of the death penalty will be further reduced and it will finally be abolished" in his country. If the inevitability of abolition is already clear, what is the point of continuing to execute?
With the China Olympics slated for next year, criticism of the industrial scale of executions is muted. Perhaps this is inevitable since the US still comes in fifth on the annual execution table (with 53), chasing China and Pakistan on total numbers of people awaiting execution on death row.
No matter what George Bush's attitude may be, Britain cannot afford to sit silently by, if morality and British foreign policy are to intersect at all. Reprieve has learned that there were at least two British nationals among the thousands who faced execution in China in 2006, yet the British government has apparently not been able to contact the men, or influence their fate.
Presumably, China wants to earn the respect of the world in the run-up to the Olympics in Beijing. A public commitment towards abolition would be a good way to start. The fact that Australia executed nobody at the Sydney Olympics has not been touted among the reasons for the success of the 2000 Olympiad; conversely, however, executing your guests hardly enhances the goodwill of the games.
May 1, 2007 12:40 PM | Guardian Unlimited
Amnesty International has published its annual report on the death penalty, which makes modestly encouraging reading for those who would put an end to state-sanctioned killing.
This is not surprising: there is little chance that history, as it is ultimately written, will favourably recount stories of electrocution, hanging, gassing or lethal injection, any more than it does burning witches at the stake.
However, this is of little solace to the thousands of individuals who continue to be executed each year, each of whom has only one life to lose.
Consider China. There were 1,010 documented executions last year, but the true number was more likely to have been close to 8,000. Executions in China are shrouded in mystery, we are told, because the fact of an execution is a state secret. Why, if a government wishes to deter its citizens from crime, would the consequences of criminality be kept hidden?
China leads the premier league of executions by a long way, with well over 90% of all executions worldwide. Despite this, there are signs that China is moving towards abolition. In March 2007, a Chinese delegate told the United Nations that he thought "the application of the death penalty will be further reduced and it will finally be abolished" in his country. If the inevitability of abolition is already clear, what is the point of continuing to execute?
With the China Olympics slated for next year, criticism of the industrial scale of executions is muted. Perhaps this is inevitable since the US still comes in fifth on the annual execution table (with 53), chasing China and Pakistan on total numbers of people awaiting execution on death row.
No matter what George Bush's attitude may be, Britain cannot afford to sit silently by, if morality and British foreign policy are to intersect at all. Reprieve has learned that there were at least two British nationals among the thousands who faced execution in China in 2006, yet the British government has apparently not been able to contact the men, or influence their fate.
Presumably, China wants to earn the respect of the world in the run-up to the Olympics in Beijing. A public commitment towards abolition would be a good way to start. The fact that Australia executed nobody at the Sydney Olympics has not been touted among the reasons for the success of the 2000 Olympiad; conversely, however, executing your guests hardly enhances the goodwill of the games.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Loosening the Stem Cell Binds
The Senate easily approved a bill this week that would free embryonic stem cell research from the worst shackles imposed by the Bush administration. The House passed its version earlier. A substantial majority of Americans tell pollsters they support embryonic stem cell research. Yet one man, President Bush, and a minority of his party, the religious and social conservatives, are once again trying to impose their moral code on the rest of the nation and stand in the way of scientific progress.
Mr. Bush is threatening a veto, and neither house had enough votes for the bills on initial passage to override him. Concerned voters will need to ratchet up the pressure on recalcitrant Republicans to help stop the president from killing the second enlightened stem cell bill in less than a year.
Under the president’s current policy, federal funds can be used to support research on only some 20 stem cell lines that have limited scientific value. Many of the lines are deteriorating or contaminated, and the group as a whole lacks the diversity needed to conduct a wide range of studies. There is no doubt that progress is being hampered. The director of the National Institutes of Health, who had initially been a good soldier in trying to live within the president’s policy, told the Senate last month that American science would be better served if the nation let researchers have access to more stem cell lines.
The restrictions on federal financing have led to absurdly complicated and costly maneuvers. Scientists are forced to buy extra equipment and laboratory space with private money to perform off-limits research while using equipment and supplies bought with federal money on the permitted stem cell research. In a shocking example cited during Senate debate, a California researcher who had been cultivating stem cells in a makeshift privately financed lab suffered a power failure but was unable to transfer her lines into industrial-strength freezers in another lab because they were federally financed. Two years of work melted away because of this inanity.
The Senate bill would greatly expand the available stem cell lines by tapping into the thousands of surplus embryos left over at fertility clinics. The bill would allow federal support for research on stem cell lines derived from embryos originally created for fertility treatments but not needed for that purpose and thus doomed to be discarded. The donors would have to give their informed consent and could not receive any financial or other inducements to donate their surplus embryos. In a nod to the religious conservatives, the bill also calls for research on alternative techniques to derive stem cells without the use of human embryos, an approach that is certainly worth pursuing but is deemed less promising by most experts.
At the same time, the Senate passed a bill proposed by supporters of the president’s policy that seeks to derive stem cells from embryos that might be judged “naturally dead,” perhaps because they were considered unsuitable for transplantation at a fertility clinic. This is a poorly considered proposal that can only be deemed a diversion from the main business at hand — the need to free American science from the chains imposed by the president.
Mr. Bush is threatening a veto, and neither house had enough votes for the bills on initial passage to override him. Concerned voters will need to ratchet up the pressure on recalcitrant Republicans to help stop the president from killing the second enlightened stem cell bill in less than a year.
Under the president’s current policy, federal funds can be used to support research on only some 20 stem cell lines that have limited scientific value. Many of the lines are deteriorating or contaminated, and the group as a whole lacks the diversity needed to conduct a wide range of studies. There is no doubt that progress is being hampered. The director of the National Institutes of Health, who had initially been a good soldier in trying to live within the president’s policy, told the Senate last month that American science would be better served if the nation let researchers have access to more stem cell lines.
The restrictions on federal financing have led to absurdly complicated and costly maneuvers. Scientists are forced to buy extra equipment and laboratory space with private money to perform off-limits research while using equipment and supplies bought with federal money on the permitted stem cell research. In a shocking example cited during Senate debate, a California researcher who had been cultivating stem cells in a makeshift privately financed lab suffered a power failure but was unable to transfer her lines into industrial-strength freezers in another lab because they were federally financed. Two years of work melted away because of this inanity.
The Senate bill would greatly expand the available stem cell lines by tapping into the thousands of surplus embryos left over at fertility clinics. The bill would allow federal support for research on stem cell lines derived from embryos originally created for fertility treatments but not needed for that purpose and thus doomed to be discarded. The donors would have to give their informed consent and could not receive any financial or other inducements to donate their surplus embryos. In a nod to the religious conservatives, the bill also calls for research on alternative techniques to derive stem cells without the use of human embryos, an approach that is certainly worth pursuing but is deemed less promising by most experts.
At the same time, the Senate passed a bill proposed by supporters of the president’s policy that seeks to derive stem cells from embryos that might be judged “naturally dead,” perhaps because they were considered unsuitable for transplantation at a fertility clinic. This is a poorly considered proposal that can only be deemed a diversion from the main business at hand — the need to free American science from the chains imposed by the president.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
When Less Is Best
By RORY STEWART.
Why are we in Afghanistan? Vice President Cheney talks terror, Britain focuses on narcotics. The European Union talks 'state-building,' others gender. On a different day, the positions seem interchangeable. Five years ago, we had a clear goal. Now we seem to be pursuing a bundle of objectives, from counterinsurgency to democratization and development, which are presented as uniform but which are in fact logically distinct and sometimes contradictory.
Finance officers in Kabul and shepherds in Kandahar want to know what we did with the $10 billion we spent in the last four years. So do any number of commentators on Afghan TV and radio. And when Helmand villagers see soldiers from countries thousands of miles away carrying guns and claiming to be only building schools, they don't believe them.
I have noticed that many Afghans now simply assume we are engaged in a grand conspiracy. Nothing else in their minds can explain the surreal gap between our language and performance. The United States needs to be honest about what it wants from Afghanistan and what it can achieve.
We should remember that we came first to protect ourselves against terrorist attack. Afghans can understand this and help. But counterterrorism is not the same as counterinsurgency. Counterterrorism requires good intelligence and Special Forces operations, of the sort the U.S. was doing in 2002 and 2003. Recently, however, NATO has become involved in a much wider counterinsurgency campaign, involving tens of thousands of troops. The objective now is to wrest rural areas from Taliban forces.
But many of the people we are fighting have no fixed political manifesto. Almost none have links to Al Qaeda or an interest in attacking U.S. soil. We will never have the troop numbers to hold these areas, and we are creating unnecessary enemies. A more considered approach to tribal communities would give us better intelligence on our real enemies. It is clear that we do not have the resources, the stomach, or the long-term commitment for a 20-year counterinsurgency campaign. And the Afghan Army is not going to take over this mission.
Our second priority should be to not lose the support of the disillusioned population in the central and western part of the country. We have spent billions on programs that have alleviated extreme poverty and supported governance but have not caught the imagination of Afghans. Afghans are bored with foreign consultants and conferences and are saying, 'Bring back the Russians: at least they built dams and roads.'' To win them over we should focus on large, highly visible infrastructure to which Afghans will be able to point in 50 years -- just as they point to the great dam built by the United States in the 1960s. The garbage is still seven feet deep and buildings are collapsing in Kabul. We can deal with these things and leave a permanent symbol of generosity.
Once we are clear about our own interests, we can think more clearly about the third priority, which is to improve Afghan lives through development projects. There are excellent models, from U.N. Habitat to the Aga Khan network, which has restored historic buildings, run rural health projects, and established a five-star hotel and Afghanistan's mobile telephone network. The soap business that the American Sarah Chayes has developed with Afghan women has been more successful than larger and wealthier business associations. Such projects should be separated from our defense and political objectives.
Sometimes it is better for us to do less. Dutch forces in the province of Uruzgan have found that, when left alone, the Taliban alienate communities by living parasitically, lecturing puritanically and failing to deliver. But when the British tried to aggressively dominate the South last summer, they alienated a dangerous proportion of the local population and had to withdraw. Pacifying the tribal areas is a task for Afghans, working with Pakistan and Iran. It will involve moving from the overcentralized state and developing formal but flexible relationships with councils in all their varied village forms.
The conventional wisdom seems to be that we squandered an opportunity in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003, being distracted by Iraq and not bringing enough troops or resources. But my experience in Afghanistan has led me to believe that the original strategy of limiting our role was correct.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
LOAD-DATE: March 20, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
THW permit legislating by citizen initiated referenda
Citizen-initiated referendums
We cannot all go down to the local town centre as the ancient Athenians did. Our nations and our states are too big for that. Citizen-initiated referendum is one way for citizens to have a direct say in government decisions where there are large populations. Two of the things citizen-initiated referendum can do are:
• allow citizens to propose a new law
• allow citizens to vote against laws passed by parliament.
Some countries that have citizen-initiated referendum have one of the above and others have both.
Citizen-initiated referendum in three countries
Switzerland
The Swiss have had citizen-initiated referendum for over 100 years and in that time have voted on more than 300 issues. In 1977 the people rejected a proposal by the government for a new kind of tax. In 1984 they rejected another government proposal to reduce the working week from 42 hours to 38 hours.
United States
In the United States many states have some form of citizen-initiated referendum. In California during the 1990 elections, voters had to deal with a ballot paper with 20 referendum questions and 144 pages containing arguments for and against each referendum proposal.
In the 1960s the Californian government passed a law that real estate agents and owners of apartment houses could not use racial discrimination against people who wanted to rent or buy apartments or houses. The real estate agents initiated a referendum to overturn this law so that they could discriminate against people in this way. The real estate agents won.
Four states have voted to bring back the death penalty through referendum. Anti-gun laws have been introduced in several states.
Italy
In Italy the citizens can only initiate a referendum to vote against a law passed by the government. They cannot initiate a referendum to propose a law. In 1991 Italian people voted to remove a law which prohibited divorce.
How citizen-initiated referendum could work
Step 1
Some people in the community want a new law or to remove an existing law. They collect a number of petitions of registered voters and take them to the electoral office (say 1 per cent of voters in a majority of electorates in order to move to the next step).
Step 2
Parliamentary officers prepare a proposed law.
Step 3
The proposed law is debated in the parliament. If the parliament does not pass the proposal, it moves to Step 4.
Step 4
A referendum is held and if a majority of voters in a majority of electorates support the proposal, it becomes law.
This House Believes That we should have more direct democracy?
| Arguments against more direct democracy | Arguments for more direct democracy |
| People already have a choice between members of parliament and the government programs they support. | People have more say about particular issues. Sometimes politicians of opposite sides agree among themselves on a policy they know the people don't support. |
| People already have to vote for federal, state and local governments. They don't want to have to go to polling booths more often. Electronic voting is not a realistic option; it has too many problems. | Electronic media allows debate and voting among large populations without any need for people to come to one place. |
| People have an opportunity, apart from elections through community and lobby groups to influence governments and governments are often guided by opinion polls. | Governments and parties can still play a role as they do today. |
| Citizen campaigns can more easily be led by people or groups with money - meaning wealthy groups have too much influence. Individual citizens or groups of citizens who propose change may not have the interest or the ability to make proposals in the best interests of all the different groups in the country or state. | Politicians are not the only people who are expert in making decisions for the nation as a whole. As people become more involved they become more expert. |
| Representative governments should look after the interests of minorities as well as the majority that voted for them. The people may be more influenced by prejudice or less concerned about minority rights. | Representative governments have not always looked after the interests of minority groups. |
| Once the people had voted on a citizen-initiated referendum it would have to become law. There would be no opportunity for the parliament to review the proposed legislation or make changes before it became law. | There is no reason to think that citizens will be any better or worse than governments. |
referendum campaigning is much less well developed and well understood than the art of election campaigning. More effective in saying “NO” than saying “YES”
Amongst other things, modern political advertising tends to be:
* negative, often fiercely so;
* visual rather than textual;
* targeted to different segments of an electorate which is profiled and segmented in depth by party organisations;
* in particular, targeted at “swinging voters” who are considered by the parties to be the voters who are least well-informed, least civic minded, most materialistic and most easily stirred to negative emotions;
* increasingly short and simple;
* content-free as far as substantive issues and policies are concerned;
* geared to selling personalities rather than policies.
None of this is well suited to securing the passage of a referendum proposal, and task which requires (a) clearly explaining the proposal so that a large majority of the voting population understand it and (b) providing persuasive arguments to convince a majority of the voters to support it.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Europe, a Moment to Ponder
IT is not easy to think of Spain as Poland. Stroll around this southern city at dusk, beneath the palms, beside the handsome bridges on the Guadalquivir River, past the chic boutiques and the Häagen-Dazs outlet, the Gothic cathedral and the Moorish palace, and it is scarcely Warsaw that comes to mind.
But, insisted Adam Michnik, the Polish writer, “Poland is the new Spain, absolutely.” He continued: “Spain was a poor country when it joined the European Union 21 years ago. It no longer is. We will see the same results in Poland.”
If history is prologue, Mr. Michnik is likely to be right. The European Union, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of its founding treaty this weekend, is more often associated with Brussels bureaucrats setting the maximum curvature of cucumbers than with transformational power. But step by step, stipulation by stipulation, Europe has been remade.
What began in limited fashion in 1957 as a drive to remove tariff barriers and promote commercial exchange has ended by banishing war from Europe, enriching it beyond measure, and producing what Mr. Michnik called “the first revolution that has been absolutely positive.”
Asia, still beset by nationalisms and open World War II wounds, can only envy Europe’s conjuring away agonizing history, a process that involved a voluntary dilution of national sovereignty unthinkable in the United States.
But it is a celebration in uncertainty. A bigger union, expanded to include the ex-Communist states of Central Europe, has proved largely ungovernable. A constitution designed to streamline its governance was rejected in 2005. Integration has been a European triumph, but not always of those who are part of large-scale Muslim immigration. The founding treaty, signed by the six founding members on March 25, 1957, rested on creative ambiguity. It called for an “ever closer union among the European peoples”; behind it lay dreams of a United States of Europe.
Still, the ambiguity persisted; it has proved divisive. Economic power has been built more effectively than political or strategic unity. Military power has lagged.
Nonetheless, “autopilot” in the union still amounts to a lot.
It will ensure, for example, that over $100 billion is sent to Poland from now to 2013 to upgrade its infrastructure and agriculture, a sum that dwarfs American aid. Similarly, more than $190 billion has been devoted to Spain since it joined the union in 1986, 11 years after the end of Franco’s dictatorship.
The result has been Spain’s extraordinary transition from a country whose per capita output was 71 percent of the European average in 1985, 90 percent in 2004, and now 100.7 percent of the median of the 27 members. Spain has moved into the club of the well off. Dictatorship seems utterly remote.
“The E.U. slashes political risk,” said Chris Huhne, a Liberal Democrat member of the British Parliament. “It also exercises a soft power on its periphery that has far more transformational impact than the American neocon agenda in the Middle East. Countries in the Balkans wanting to come into the European democratic family have to adapt.”
That adaptation is economic as well as political. The creation of something approximating an American single market has been powerful in ending cartels and monopolies, introducing competition, pushing privatization and generally promoting the market over heavily managed capitalism.
Indeed, defense of what is called the European social model, with universal health care and extensive unemployment benefits, has become a tenet of European identity. How far that identity, as opposed to national identities, exists today is a matter of dispute. Only 2 percent of European Union inhabitants of working age live in member states other than their own.
But a survey in the French daily Le Figaro showed that 71 percent of French people now feel some pride in a European identity.
It is also open politically: How much of a federation should Europe be?
Germany has been utterly remade by an integrating Europe to the point that more people worry today about German pacifism than expansionism. But Poland is just entering that transformational process; under Lech Kaczynski’s conservative presidency its wariness of the pooling of sovereignty inherent in the union has been clear.
“The E.U. is an unfinished project, but so what?” Mr. Voigt said. “Why be nervous? We have time.”
But, insisted Adam Michnik, the Polish writer, “Poland is the new Spain, absolutely.” He continued: “Spain was a poor country when it joined the European Union 21 years ago. It no longer is. We will see the same results in Poland.”
If history is prologue, Mr. Michnik is likely to be right. The European Union, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of its founding treaty this weekend, is more often associated with Brussels bureaucrats setting the maximum curvature of cucumbers than with transformational power. But step by step, stipulation by stipulation, Europe has been remade.
What began in limited fashion in 1957 as a drive to remove tariff barriers and promote commercial exchange has ended by banishing war from Europe, enriching it beyond measure, and producing what Mr. Michnik called “the first revolution that has been absolutely positive.”
Asia, still beset by nationalisms and open World War II wounds, can only envy Europe’s conjuring away agonizing history, a process that involved a voluntary dilution of national sovereignty unthinkable in the United States.
But it is a celebration in uncertainty. A bigger union, expanded to include the ex-Communist states of Central Europe, has proved largely ungovernable. A constitution designed to streamline its governance was rejected in 2005. Integration has been a European triumph, but not always of those who are part of large-scale Muslim immigration. The founding treaty, signed by the six founding members on March 25, 1957, rested on creative ambiguity. It called for an “ever closer union among the European peoples”; behind it lay dreams of a United States of Europe.
Still, the ambiguity persisted; it has proved divisive. Economic power has been built more effectively than political or strategic unity. Military power has lagged.
Nonetheless, “autopilot” in the union still amounts to a lot.
It will ensure, for example, that over $100 billion is sent to Poland from now to 2013 to upgrade its infrastructure and agriculture, a sum that dwarfs American aid. Similarly, more than $190 billion has been devoted to Spain since it joined the union in 1986, 11 years after the end of Franco’s dictatorship.
The result has been Spain’s extraordinary transition from a country whose per capita output was 71 percent of the European average in 1985, 90 percent in 2004, and now 100.7 percent of the median of the 27 members. Spain has moved into the club of the well off. Dictatorship seems utterly remote.
“The E.U. slashes political risk,” said Chris Huhne, a Liberal Democrat member of the British Parliament. “It also exercises a soft power on its periphery that has far more transformational impact than the American neocon agenda in the Middle East. Countries in the Balkans wanting to come into the European democratic family have to adapt.”
That adaptation is economic as well as political. The creation of something approximating an American single market has been powerful in ending cartels and monopolies, introducing competition, pushing privatization and generally promoting the market over heavily managed capitalism.
Indeed, defense of what is called the European social model, with universal health care and extensive unemployment benefits, has become a tenet of European identity. How far that identity, as opposed to national identities, exists today is a matter of dispute. Only 2 percent of European Union inhabitants of working age live in member states other than their own.
But a survey in the French daily Le Figaro showed that 71 percent of French people now feel some pride in a European identity.
It is also open politically: How much of a federation should Europe be?
Germany has been utterly remade by an integrating Europe to the point that more people worry today about German pacifism than expansionism. But Poland is just entering that transformational process; under Lech Kaczynski’s conservative presidency its wariness of the pooling of sovereignty inherent in the union has been clear.
“The E.U. is an unfinished project, but so what?” Mr. Voigt said. “Why be nervous? We have time.”
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Material Shows Weakening of Climate Reports
A House committee released documents Monday that showed hundreds of instances in which a White House official who was previously an oil industry lobbyist edited government climate reports to play up uncertainty of a human role in global warming or play down evidence of such a role.
Across NASA, researchers and career public affairs workers spoke up to alert The New York Times to rising political interference with the flow of science news to the public. A week after The Times’s first story, Michael Griffin, the NASA administrator, issued a statement "on scientific opennness" to the agency's 19,000 employees saying changes would be made.
In a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the official, Philip A. Cooney, who left government in 2005, defended the changes he had made in government reports over several years. Mr. Cooney said the editing was part of the normal White House review process and reflected findings in a climate report written for President Bush by the National Academy of Sciences in 2001.
He was hired by Exxon Mobil after resigning in 2005 following reports on the editing in The New York Times. The White House said his resignation was not related to the disclosures.
Mr. Cooney said his past work opposing restrictions on heat-trapping gases for the oil industry had had no bearing on his actions once he joined the White House. “When I came to the White House,” he testified, “my sole loyalties were to the president and his administration.”
Mr. Cooney, who has no scientific background, said he had based his editing and recommendations on what he had seen in good faith as the “most authoritative and current views of the state of scientific knowledge.”
The hearing also produced the first sworn statements from George C. Deutsch III, who moved in 2005 from the Bush re-election campaign to public affairs jobs at NASA. There he warned career press officers to exert more control over James E. Hansen, the top climate expert at the space agency.
Mr. Deutsch resigned last year after it was disclosed that he had never graduated from Texas A&M University, as his résumé on file at NASA said. He has since completed work for the degree, he said Monday.
Democrats focused on fresh details that committee staff members had compiled showing how Mr. Cooney made hundreds of changes to government climate research plans and reports to Congress on climate that raised a sense of uncertainty about the science.
The documents “appear to portray a systematic White House effort to minimize the significance of climate change,” said a memorandum circulated by the Democrats under the committee chairman, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California.
Across NASA, researchers and career public affairs workers spoke up to alert The New York Times to rising political interference with the flow of science news to the public. A week after The Times’s first story, Michael Griffin, the NASA administrator, issued a statement "on scientific opennness" to the agency's 19,000 employees saying changes would be made.
In a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the official, Philip A. Cooney, who left government in 2005, defended the changes he had made in government reports over several years. Mr. Cooney said the editing was part of the normal White House review process and reflected findings in a climate report written for President Bush by the National Academy of Sciences in 2001.
He was hired by Exxon Mobil after resigning in 2005 following reports on the editing in The New York Times. The White House said his resignation was not related to the disclosures.
Mr. Cooney said his past work opposing restrictions on heat-trapping gases for the oil industry had had no bearing on his actions once he joined the White House. “When I came to the White House,” he testified, “my sole loyalties were to the president and his administration.”
Mr. Cooney, who has no scientific background, said he had based his editing and recommendations on what he had seen in good faith as the “most authoritative and current views of the state of scientific knowledge.”
The hearing also produced the first sworn statements from George C. Deutsch III, who moved in 2005 from the Bush re-election campaign to public affairs jobs at NASA. There he warned career press officers to exert more control over James E. Hansen, the top climate expert at the space agency.
Mr. Deutsch resigned last year after it was disclosed that he had never graduated from Texas A&M University, as his résumé on file at NASA said. He has since completed work for the degree, he said Monday.
Democrats focused on fresh details that committee staff members had compiled showing how Mr. Cooney made hundreds of changes to government climate research plans and reports to Congress on climate that raised a sense of uncertainty about the science.
The documents “appear to portray a systematic White House effort to minimize the significance of climate change,” said a memorandum circulated by the Democrats under the committee chairman, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Britain Wonders if More Elections Equal More Democracy
THE members of the House of Lords, that august assembly of scarlet-robed and mainly appointed peers which forms the upper chamber of Britain’s democracy, voted last week to stand firm against pressure to become fully elected.
After centuries as a hereditary chamber that only reluctantly permitted appointed members to join its clubby conclaves, no one expected the House of Lords to welcome the latest demand from the House of Commons to change its ways.
But as this longstanding battle between the upper-crust and the commoners entered its probably protracted final phase, it produced a somewhat counterintuitive notion: more elections may not necessarily mean more democracy.
Since 1999, the House of Lords has challenged the House of Commons — and thus the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair, which has a majority in the more powerful lower house — on 350 issues. True, the Lords chose to oppose the government on some matters, such as a ban on fox hunting, that seemed to reflect the older interests of an assembly of nobles controlling vast estates where equestrian hunters charged and gamboled.
But many of the tussles related to civil rights and counterterrorism laws seen by the Lords as repressive. The Lords, in other words, became the improbable champions of the underdog in the face of a Labor government that once claimed the libertarian mantle for itself. In the process, the Lords displayed a doughty independence born of lifetime tenures that leave them largely aloof from electoral politics.
The battle now is between nonelected independence and electoral legitimacy.
The Commons wants to replace 600-odd life peers, appointed in various ways, and the remaining 92 hereditary peers with people elected from party lists for a single 15-year term. Some opponents of the plan argue that because accountability won’t be reinforced by re-elections, the voting might purchase an appearance of legitimacy at the expense of cherished independence.
“The promise of democratic legitimacy is a sham,” wrote Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law and political science at Yale, in The London Review of Books. “The bar on re-election strips voters of their basic tool for democratic accountability: the politicians’ fear that their constituents will throw them out of office.” Or, as one Labor legislator, Tom Levitt, said in the House of Commons, “it’s not the election that makes democracy, it’s the re-election.”
Prime Minister Tony Blair had favored a mixed House of Lords, half appointed, half elected, a plan that backfired when the Commons went much farther than he wished. The Lords — and Ladies — were not too keen on a mixed chamber, either, saying competition between Lords and Commons could create unmanageable tensions between two competing elected bodies
A hybrid house, said Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean, a Labor peer, “is not a connection to democracy; it’s a connection to constitutional uncertainty and electoral unfairness.”
The House of Lords has always been a font of patronage. Almost by definition, the peers owed their elevated positions to the largess of their monarch and their ability to raise taxes and armies in return. Indeed, Bob Marshall-Andrews, a Labor legislator opposed to the proposed changes, told Parliament: “The true curse of the British political system is patronage.”
And it may be that the police inquiry into the so-called cash-for-honors scandal gave the final push to almost a century of efforts by the House of Commons to limit the power of the Lords.
After centuries as a hereditary chamber that only reluctantly permitted appointed members to join its clubby conclaves, no one expected the House of Lords to welcome the latest demand from the House of Commons to change its ways.
But as this longstanding battle between the upper-crust and the commoners entered its probably protracted final phase, it produced a somewhat counterintuitive notion: more elections may not necessarily mean more democracy.
Since 1999, the House of Lords has challenged the House of Commons — and thus the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair, which has a majority in the more powerful lower house — on 350 issues. True, the Lords chose to oppose the government on some matters, such as a ban on fox hunting, that seemed to reflect the older interests of an assembly of nobles controlling vast estates where equestrian hunters charged and gamboled.
But many of the tussles related to civil rights and counterterrorism laws seen by the Lords as repressive. The Lords, in other words, became the improbable champions of the underdog in the face of a Labor government that once claimed the libertarian mantle for itself. In the process, the Lords displayed a doughty independence born of lifetime tenures that leave them largely aloof from electoral politics.
The battle now is between nonelected independence and electoral legitimacy.
The Commons wants to replace 600-odd life peers, appointed in various ways, and the remaining 92 hereditary peers with people elected from party lists for a single 15-year term. Some opponents of the plan argue that because accountability won’t be reinforced by re-elections, the voting might purchase an appearance of legitimacy at the expense of cherished independence.
“The promise of democratic legitimacy is a sham,” wrote Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law and political science at Yale, in The London Review of Books. “The bar on re-election strips voters of their basic tool for democratic accountability: the politicians’ fear that their constituents will throw them out of office.” Or, as one Labor legislator, Tom Levitt, said in the House of Commons, “it’s not the election that makes democracy, it’s the re-election.”
Prime Minister Tony Blair had favored a mixed House of Lords, half appointed, half elected, a plan that backfired when the Commons went much farther than he wished. The Lords — and Ladies — were not too keen on a mixed chamber, either, saying competition between Lords and Commons could create unmanageable tensions between two competing elected bodies
A hybrid house, said Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean, a Labor peer, “is not a connection to democracy; it’s a connection to constitutional uncertainty and electoral unfairness.”
The House of Lords has always been a font of patronage. Almost by definition, the peers owed their elevated positions to the largess of their monarch and their ability to raise taxes and armies in return. Indeed, Bob Marshall-Andrews, a Labor legislator opposed to the proposed changes, told Parliament: “The true curse of the British political system is patronage.”
And it may be that the police inquiry into the so-called cash-for-honors scandal gave the final push to almost a century of efforts by the House of Commons to limit the power of the Lords.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
The Biased Broadcasting Corporation
“If you watch Western television, you live in one universe, and if you watch Middle Eastern television, you live in another altogether.” The Middle Eastern broadcasts, he added, tended to depict the West in a negative light.
Washington is well aware of this problem and has tried to address it. In 2004, the United States established its own Arabic-language satellite television station, Al Hurra. But Al Hurra has not been a success, and stations like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiyya, based in the Gulf states, continue to dominate the region.
Those stations will soon face a formidable rival. The BBC World Service plans to start an Arabic television service this fall, and the BBC knows what it is doing. It has been broadcasting in Arabic on the radio for more than 60 years and has a huge audience.
This new television station might sound like good news for America. Many of us pick up BBC broadcasts in English, and we respect their quality. But the World Service in English is one thing, and the World Service in Arabic is another entirely. If the BBC’s Arabic TV programs resemble its radio programs, then they will be just as anti-Western as anything that comes out of the Gulf, if not more so. They will serve to increase, rather than to diminish, tensions, hostilities and misunderstandings among nations.
For example, a 50-minute BBC Arabic Service discussion program about torture discussed only one specific allegation, which came from the head of an organization representing some 90 Saudis imprisoned at Guantánamo. This speaker stated that the prisoners were subject to disgusting and horrible forms of torture and suggested that three inmates reported by the United States to have committed suicide were actually killed. Another participant insisted that the two countries guilty of torturing political prisoners on the largest scale were Israel and the United States.
At the same time, the authoritarian regimes and armed militants of the Arab world get sympathetic treatment on BBC Arabic. When Saddam Hussein was in power, he was a great favorite of the service, which reported as straight news his re-election to a seven-year term in 2002, when he got 100 percent of the vote.
The Arabic Service not only shields Arab leaders from criticism but also tends to avoid topics they might find embarrassing: human rights, the role of military and security forces, corruption, discrimination against minorities, censorship, poverty and unemployment. When, from time to time, such topics do arise, they are usually dealt with in the most general terms: there may, for instance, be guarded references to “certain Arab countries.”
By contrast, the words and deeds of Western leaders, particularly the American president and the British prime minister, are subject to minute analysis, generally on the assumption that behind them lies a hidden and disreputable agenda. Last summer, when the British arrested two dozen people alleged to have been plotting to blow up airplanes crossing the Atlantic, a BBC presenter centered a discussion on the theory that these arrests had taken place because Tony Blair, embarrassed by opposition to Britain’s role in the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, wanted to distract the public while at the same time associating Muslims with terrorism.
The British are among our closest and most reliable allies, and it is strange that their government pays for these broadcasts, many of which are produced in Cairo rather than in London. If the BBC models its Arabic television service on its Arabic radio service, yet another anti-Western, antidemocratic channel will find its place on the Arab screen.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/opinion/15stewart.html?ex=1331611200&en=2637911a0f45885c&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Washington is well aware of this problem and has tried to address it. In 2004, the United States established its own Arabic-language satellite television station, Al Hurra. But Al Hurra has not been a success, and stations like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiyya, based in the Gulf states, continue to dominate the region.
Those stations will soon face a formidable rival. The BBC World Service plans to start an Arabic television service this fall, and the BBC knows what it is doing. It has been broadcasting in Arabic on the radio for more than 60 years and has a huge audience.
This new television station might sound like good news for America. Many of us pick up BBC broadcasts in English, and we respect their quality. But the World Service in English is one thing, and the World Service in Arabic is another entirely. If the BBC’s Arabic TV programs resemble its radio programs, then they will be just as anti-Western as anything that comes out of the Gulf, if not more so. They will serve to increase, rather than to diminish, tensions, hostilities and misunderstandings among nations.
For example, a 50-minute BBC Arabic Service discussion program about torture discussed only one specific allegation, which came from the head of an organization representing some 90 Saudis imprisoned at Guantánamo. This speaker stated that the prisoners were subject to disgusting and horrible forms of torture and suggested that three inmates reported by the United States to have committed suicide were actually killed. Another participant insisted that the two countries guilty of torturing political prisoners on the largest scale were Israel and the United States.
At the same time, the authoritarian regimes and armed militants of the Arab world get sympathetic treatment on BBC Arabic. When Saddam Hussein was in power, he was a great favorite of the service, which reported as straight news his re-election to a seven-year term in 2002, when he got 100 percent of the vote.
The Arabic Service not only shields Arab leaders from criticism but also tends to avoid topics they might find embarrassing: human rights, the role of military and security forces, corruption, discrimination against minorities, censorship, poverty and unemployment. When, from time to time, such topics do arise, they are usually dealt with in the most general terms: there may, for instance, be guarded references to “certain Arab countries.”
By contrast, the words and deeds of Western leaders, particularly the American president and the British prime minister, are subject to minute analysis, generally on the assumption that behind them lies a hidden and disreputable agenda. Last summer, when the British arrested two dozen people alleged to have been plotting to blow up airplanes crossing the Atlantic, a BBC presenter centered a discussion on the theory that these arrests had taken place because Tony Blair, embarrassed by opposition to Britain’s role in the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, wanted to distract the public while at the same time associating Muslims with terrorism.
The British are among our closest and most reliable allies, and it is strange that their government pays for these broadcasts, many of which are produced in Cairo rather than in London. If the BBC models its Arabic television service on its Arabic radio service, yet another anti-Western, antidemocratic channel will find its place on the Arab screen.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/opinion/15stewart.html?ex=1331611200&en=2637911a0f45885c&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Texas House Rejects Order by Governor on Vaccines
Six weeks after Gov. Rick Perry issued an executive order making Texas the first state to require that sixth-grade girls be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer, the State House of Representatives voted 119 to 21 yesterday to approve a bill that would nullify the order.
But Mr. Perry’s spokeswoman said the efforts to overturn the order would create a dangerous situation in which far fewer women might receive the vaccine.
The order mandated shots of the Merck vaccine Gardasil as protection against the human papillomavirus, or HPV, starting in September 2008. While it was praised by health advocates, it caught many by surprise in a largely conservative state where sexual politics are often hard fought and where both houses of the Legislature are controlled by Republicans.
Ms. Moody said in a statement that the order “would help to protect 95 percent of young women in Texas against the strains of HPV that cause cervical cancer.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were nearly 10,000 cases of cervical cancer last year and about 3,700 deaths from the disease.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/14/us/14vaccine.html?ex=1331524800&en=8a43ce71ac57404d&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
But Mr. Perry’s spokeswoman said the efforts to overturn the order would create a dangerous situation in which far fewer women might receive the vaccine.
The order mandated shots of the Merck vaccine Gardasil as protection against the human papillomavirus, or HPV, starting in September 2008. While it was praised by health advocates, it caught many by surprise in a largely conservative state where sexual politics are often hard fought and where both houses of the Legislature are controlled by Republicans.
Ms. Moody said in a statement that the order “would help to protect 95 percent of young women in Texas against the strains of HPV that cause cervical cancer.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were nearly 10,000 cases of cervical cancer last year and about 3,700 deaths from the disease.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/14/us/14vaccine.html?ex=1331524800&en=8a43ce71ac57404d&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Access to former president's documents
In November 2001, while the world was focused on terrorism, President Bush issued an executive order making it significantly harder for historians and the public to gain access to a former president's official papers. The House has a chance tomorrow to reverse this damaging decree.
The bill is part of a broader open-government package that includes measures to require public disclosure of private donations to build presidential libraries and to repair Bush administration damage to the Freedom of Information Act. It also mandates greater transparency in federal contracting. Approval of the whole package would be a major boon for the writing of history and for government accountability.
The bill is part of a broader open-government package that includes measures to require public disclosure of private donations to build presidential libraries and to repair Bush administration damage to the Freedom of Information Act. It also mandates greater transparency in federal contracting. Approval of the whole package would be a major boon for the writing of history and for government accountability.
Elect a House of Lords
Faced with the unpleasant prospect of actually having to run for office, members of the House of Lords declared Monday that their chamber had functioned pretty well without elections for hundreds of years and that there was no need to rush into anything now.
"It is, by definition, not elected."
House of Commons supported a plan to end government appointments to the House of Lords and to make it an all-elected body. But while the suggestion — that it makes sense in a modern democracy for legislators to be democratically elected — does not sound particularly radical, some lords reacted as if "election" were a four-letter word.
Some contended that people were sick of politicians, and sick of having to vote for them. Others said that if one had to campaign to acquire a seat in the Lords, no decent candidates would want to run. The members said that an elected House of Lords would threaten the supremacy of the House of Commons, that elections would be too expensive and too complicated, that elected members were, in fact, less independent than appointed ones.
"The House of Lords is good at the job it does, and the country knows it,” Baroness Boothroyd said. “The future of our Parliament is at risk if we upset the balance between the two houses that has served this country well."
The House of Lords now has 731 members, a majority chosen for life by the government of the day. But so varied are the proposals and so complicated the potential repercussions that as the debate wore on, it was clear that there was no consensus. Some peers said the chamber should be half-elected, half-appointed; others said that the proportion should be different.
Quote: 19th century journalist and essayist Walter Bagehot urged all deliberate consideration. "The reason is that all important English institutions are relics of a long past; that they have undergone many transformations that, like old houses which have been altered many times, at first sight would not be imagined," he said. "Very often a rash alterer will pull down the very part which makes them habitable."
The so-called cash-for-peerages scandal: the government has been accused of offering membership in Lords in exchange for party donations.
"I have seen, as I traveled, 100-percent-elected second chambers which do work effectively," she said. "What I do want to defend is the ancient and honorable tradition of people to choose their legislators. It is a far from modern idea." Quoting Mark Twain, she summarized opponents' attitude: "I'm all for progress; it's change I can't stand."
"It is, by definition, not elected."
House of Commons supported a plan to end government appointments to the House of Lords and to make it an all-elected body. But while the suggestion — that it makes sense in a modern democracy for legislators to be democratically elected — does not sound particularly radical, some lords reacted as if "election" were a four-letter word.
Some contended that people were sick of politicians, and sick of having to vote for them. Others said that if one had to campaign to acquire a seat in the Lords, no decent candidates would want to run. The members said that an elected House of Lords would threaten the supremacy of the House of Commons, that elections would be too expensive and too complicated, that elected members were, in fact, less independent than appointed ones.
"The House of Lords is good at the job it does, and the country knows it,” Baroness Boothroyd said. “The future of our Parliament is at risk if we upset the balance between the two houses that has served this country well."
The House of Lords now has 731 members, a majority chosen for life by the government of the day. But so varied are the proposals and so complicated the potential repercussions that as the debate wore on, it was clear that there was no consensus. Some peers said the chamber should be half-elected, half-appointed; others said that the proportion should be different.
Quote: 19th century journalist and essayist Walter Bagehot urged all deliberate consideration. "The reason is that all important English institutions are relics of a long past; that they have undergone many transformations that, like old houses which have been altered many times, at first sight would not be imagined," he said. "Very often a rash alterer will pull down the very part which makes them habitable."
The so-called cash-for-peerages scandal: the government has been accused of offering membership in Lords in exchange for party donations.
"I have seen, as I traveled, 100-percent-elected second chambers which do work effectively," she said. "What I do want to defend is the ancient and honorable tradition of people to choose their legislators. It is a far from modern idea." Quoting Mark Twain, she summarized opponents' attitude: "I'm all for progress; it's change I can't stand."
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