Mediaboss Marketing

Jeanine ez, the former interim Bolivian president, was arrested by President Luis Arces administration on March 13. ez governed for a year, during which she presided over massacres of protestors and a crackdown on journalists. When election season came, she also postponed elections and purged voter rolls. However, this has hardly been mentioned in mainstream U.S. coverage of the arrest. Instead of focusing on the controversial actions of ez, mainstream media outlets have focused on the optics of her ousting.

The roots of this favorable narrative lie in ezs ascent to power. In October 2019, her predecessor Evo Morales a leftist who sought a fourth term as president was accused of electoral fraud by the opposition after winning re-election by a narrow margin. These accusations were lent undeserved credibility by the US-funded Organization of American States (OAS), which claimed irregularities in the election. The OAS was founded as a multilateral regional body designed to lead decisions and policy analysis in western hemisphere affairs, and now focuses on election monitoring. The OASs analysis was challenged by the Center for Economic and Policy Research for its misunderstanding of the Bolivian vote-counting system and its failure to account for the impact of votes from rural, predominantly left-leaning areas. However, by the time these criticisms came to light, the damage had already been done.

Protests against Morales erupted and quickly turned violent, prompting the Bolivian military to call for Morales resignation. Morales and his allies labeled this as a coup, but the U.S. media was more hesitant. Morales subsequently fled the country and many politicians in his party resigned in protest, unintentionally clearing the path to the presidency for ez, a conservative evangelical senator who was fifth in line for succession.

By this point, a democratically elected president had been forcibly replaced with an unelected opposition leader based on unproven voter fraud allegations. However, this was heralded by American pundits as one of the few big victories democracy has won in recent years, while Morales was said to have an insatiable appetite for power. When similar events occurred in the United States on Jan. 6, these same columnists unambiguously labeled it a coup and denounced Donald Trump (who had also supported Morales ouster) as a grave threat to U.S. democracy since it was his supporters that stormed the Capitol.

Advertisement

The blatant hypocrisy of these publications, many of which never admitted wrongdoing, casts the coverage of ezs arrest in a new light. The Bolivian people chose a government and leader who are attempting to hold accountable a tyrant whose numerous crimes were well-documented. However, the media focus is placed on the OAS and the right-wing protesters as it was during Bolivias 2019 election. To this end, ezs abuses of power have been downplayed, with no mention of her own attempt to arrest her predecessor mentioned in either The New York Times or The Washington Post articles on the subject. Instead, these articles restate the debunked allegations of voter fraud from 2019 and frame ezs arrest as a betrayal of Bolivian democracy.

Americas corporate media has a long history of supporting the United States as it interferes with Latin American governance. There is a clear pattern of the press failing to hold the United States accountable as it sabotages its southern neighbors. This can be seen from blaming the late Chilean president Salvador Allende for a US-backed coup to celebrating the ouster of the Venezuelan president in a US-enabled coup to calling for US intervention in South American countries with democratically elected presidents.

Now, as evidence surfaces that the United States funded right-wing groups in Bolivia and has given asylum to the Bolivian minister of justice who accused Morales of terrorism, it becomes clear that there is a similar dynamic at work here. The 2019 ouster of Morales, whose politics were decidedly anti-American, was justified in U.S. coverage. On the other hand, mainstream outlets portray ez as a pro-American whose arrest is a threat to Bolivias stability.

Given the presss past inaccuracies in covering Bolivia and South America in general, their alarmist descriptions of these new developments should be treated with skepticism by the American public. Prosecuting ez is comparable to Trumps impeachment trial, and until the evidence against her is presented in court, any judgments made will be premature. It is a double standard for the media to depict ezs capture as a destabilizing act of partisan tyranny as they applaud the arrests of Jan. 6 rioters. Our media cannot demand accountability in the United States only to insist that the same thing in other countries is a harmful development. Condemning injustice at home is meaningless unless we condemn it abroad as well.

Opinions expressed on the editorial pages are not necessarily those of WSN, and our publication of opinions is not an endorsement of them.

Email Max Tiefer at [emailprotected]

Advertisement

View original post here:
America's press should not be the arbiter of Bolivian democracy - NYU Washington Square News

Employees who are allowed to have a say at work are more likely to participate in the democratic process outside the office. But new trends in the labour market are a threat to democracy, warns a Swiss expert.

As an economist, Im interested in how the Swiss economy ticks, from the founding of innovative startups to the interest rate decisions of the National Bank. Before coming to swissinfo.ch, I worked as an economics journalist for the Der Bund and Finanz und Wirtschaft newspapers.

More about the author| German Department

In 1970, British political scientist Carole Pateman was the first to mention a link between participation at work and democratic participation. She argued that giving employees a say at work can generate positive feelings. These motivates employees to participate more in democratic processes in other ways. Later research found that people who experience democracy at work learn additional skills which can in turn be used outside the office. And these lead to greater participation.

A number of studies, especially in the US, have confirmed the connection between participation in the workplace and democratic participation. For example, research teams have found a positive correlation between union representation and voting participation.

I think democracy in companies is a prerequisite for democracy to be alive at the state level," philosophy professor Rahel Jaeggi told SWI swissinfo.ch.

For democracies to thrive they require more than just citizens turning out regularly at the ballot box. They also depend on people participating in public tasks on a voluntary or part-time basis. For example, in Switzerland, democratic participation can take many other forms: from joining demonstrations and collecting signatures to hanging flags and banners outside homes.

But democracy has to be learned, according to Joachim Blatter, professor of political theory at the University of Lucerne.

You have to learn to be active and to get involved. At the same time, you have to realise that the system requires perseverance and that it's not enough to just shout out loud, he said.

But how does this democratic tradition link to the workplace?

Socio-economic issues and interest groups such as trade unions have been central to the formation of political parties especially centre-left Social Democratic parties - and the associated democratic participation and mobilisation in many countries, says Blatter.

The situation is different in Switzerland where there has never been a particularly strong trade union movement. Can we conclude that the Swiss workplace has been less important as a training ground for democratic processes than in other countries?

Yes, I would say so, says Blatter. But the big differences between countries have blurred over the past 10-15 years.

In 2017, three economists from the US and Australia published a comprehensive study on having a voice in the workplace and its impact on democratic participation. They analysed data from the 2010/2011 European Social Survey of over 14,000 employees from 27 European countries - including Switzerland. Nine indicators describe the extent of political participation - for example, whether someone voted in the last national election, took part in a demonstration or signed a petition. Four indicators define how much say the respondent has at work - for example, whether they are allowed to determine their own place of work and working hours.

The researchers found that having more say at work increased the likelihood that a person would participate more in democratic processes outside the office. They also found that this relationship was similar across all countries studied.

Despite this connection between work and politics, Blatter says he has observed several worrying changes in the labour market.

In the past, it was possible to have a career and still be active in politics or be a member of an association. Today, international competition is much stiffer, he says.

If you want to get ahead professionally, you have to put in the hours at work and you hardly have time left for politics, said Blatter.

As a result, he said, people tend to be more individualistic and focus on themselves and lose sight of common goals - either within a firm or outside the office. His other concern is that people seem to leave jobs if they are unhappy much more readily rather than using their voice to resolve issues.

Dynamism helps to move people; stability helps to find compromises and a functioning democracy needs both, he said.

But Blatter also notes positive developments at work.

Many companies have moved away from paying bonuses based on individual goals, he said. This allows employees to develop a stronger sense of community, something central to democracy.

Representing your own interests is not enough. You also have to be able to think of others and thus win over majorities, he said.

The Lucerne professor also believes it is positive that workplaces have become less hierarchical and fewer employees are required to blindly follow orders.

Today, most people have to decide much more independently how to do their jobs and achieve their goals. In that respect, the working world has become more stimulating for the masses.

Here is the original post:
Share your opinions at the workplace - for the sake of democracy - swissinfo.ch

Make old family photos come alive. Have Joe Biden or Kim Jung-un sing a song and act in famous Hollywood scenes. Deepfake technology makes this all possible. This is done using clever software to create or manipulate images, sound and text. It all sounds quite innocent. Yet this technology carries a lot of risks. What about politicians suddenly shouting things they never said in real life? Or when your daughter calls you to transfer money, which later turns out to be software

The technology is now so advanced that most people do not realize that the images have been tampered with. Thats according to research carried out by the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands. The same research also found that these so-called deepfakes can negatively influence opinions. Experts warn of an infocalypse. If this continues, we will no longer be able to rely on our eyes and ears to judge what is real.

Just as the brain is still the most elusive part of our body, artificial intelligence is still very much uncharted territory. That our brains control our bodies is something we as humans have come to accept. However, this does not apply to the way in which AI is gradually taking over control of our society. We would like to have a few more vigorous debates about that. In a series of articles and interviews, Innovation Origins, in close cooperation with theDutch AI Coalition, reveals what the average Dutch person feels about this all-important social revolution. How do we as humans keep our hands on the controls? The fears, the opportunities, the dilemmas.

In the opinion of future tech strategist Mark van Rijmenam, we as a society have a serious problem when we can no longer tell if videos are real or fake. Besides the fact that you can no longer trust the images you see, a politician can also exploit deepfakes to deny certain statements, he explains.

He believes that things have not yet reached that point. In many images, we can still see with the naked eye that they are manipulations. Provided you pay attention of course, since images are becoming more and more realistic. Just like other technologies, the development of deepfake technology is advancing incredibly fast. People will no longer be able to tell the difference within one to three years, Van Rijmenam predicts.

Jarno Duursma, a technology expert and author of the report Deepfake technology; the infocalypse, is not blind to the risks of deepfakes either. Duursma already sees things that are indistinguishable from the real thing. Yet he thinks the dangers are overestimated. The older generation in particular is still from a time when they trusted that whatever was in the newspaper was true. With the advent of social media, suddenly anyone could hurl information into the world. Including information that is not true. So weve been dealing with unreliable information on the Internet for some time now.

Recently, scientists at the University at Buffalo released an AI tool that determines with 94 percent certainty whether something is a deepfake or not. To do this, the model looks at the reflection in the eyes, among other things. Both experts agree that it will always be a cat and mouse game when it comes to unmasking deepfakes. But even if it is discovered afterwards that something is a deepfake, the damage can be substantial. Van Rijmenam: Think about the damage to companies reputations. Victims of fake revenge porn who are no longer accepted by their family. Or people who give in to blackmail resulting from manipulated images. Even if it is clear pretty quickly that these are deepfakes, the damage has already been done.

Innovation Origins asked a number of Dutch people what they think about deepfakes and whether, in addition to the dangers, they also see opportunities for this technology. Like the experts, they cite fake news and identity fraud as the biggest risks. They are aware of this phenomena when viewing information on the Internet. Some respondents are concerned about what the consequences of deepfakes might be. According to them, opportunities lie in being able to better imagine what something will look like, advertising and making more and easier funny videos for the Internet.

Besides all the risks, both technology experts believe there are also plenty of upsides to deepfake technology. Van Rijmenam: Using deepfake technology, you can help people get over their fear of swimming or other fears. By pasting their face onto a video, a kind of memory is implanted in their minds. Your brain doesnt know if its true or not. It works the same as if you were to imagine yourself speaking in front of a thousand people. Then when you actually step on stage, your brain thinks, Ive already done this, I can do this!

Duursma is careful: This still needs to be researched, we dont yet know if this is really how it works in our brain. Other advantages are more obvious he says: With deepfake technology, you can clone the voices of the voice actors of The Simpsons and continue making episodes long after they have passed away. You can bring amazing people who have died back to life. A movie with Elvis Presley? Why not! I even had a digital avatar of myself created that I can use for short video presentations. It doesnt work perfectly yet, but it saves a lot of time. I no longer have to record a video of myself. I type the text and then the AI system makes a video to go with it.

Duursma prefers to use the umbrella term synthetic media for deepfakes. These are renderings made or manipulated by AI software. From paintings to film scripts and even digital individuals who can speak in different languages. Basically anything we can think up, but created or modified by AI. This software makes creativity accessible to everyone. It allows you to generate thousands of ideas or perspectives and choose from any of them. Its a goldmine of ideas.

For instance, there is already an AI model that conjures up new images on the basis of a written text. Or comes up with ideas for new start-ups. These technologies use the GPT-3 language model, which wrote an article in The Guardian last year. According to Duursma, we will work increasingly more with these kinds of systems in the future. People are afraid of bing made redundant. Thats a kind of primal feeling. While we already lean on technology for so many things. I dont remember phone numbers anymore, for one thing. To me, machines with imagination that generate new ideas for us are not a scary idea at all. It gives everyone access to creativity.

Original post:
Deepfakes: Danger to democracy or creativity for all? - Innovation Origins

The state legislatures Environment Committee hearing started on ZOOM at 10 a.m. Friday, March 19. There were a number of bills on the agenda.

Usually legislators get the first hour and then the public gets to testify. However, this day the Commissioner of DEEP Katie Dykes was the guest at 10 a.m. and the legislators asked her questions until 2:30. Then finally the public got to testify.

The way ZOOM hearings work is this: Those who want to testify in person register to do so and then the night before the hearing the committee sends out the list of when each person may testify.

I was given number 45.

The two big bills that got most of the testimony were:

So.. The first 25 people who testified got tons of questions. The legislators were all very attentive and very frisky. Some people were talking up to half an hour. If the legislators knew the person testifying they could go on even longer with many legislators saying hello and asking many questions.

After about seven hours by about 5 p.m. some legislators were getting upset by how long this was all taking and how many people were left yet to testify and the legislators began to fight among themselves about how long each person should get and how long each individual legislator should get. All this went on in public over ZOOM.

By dinner time things started to thin out. Legislators were getting tired and probably hungry, so they asked fewer questions. Some people now got none. Then a fisherman testified on a bill about enforcing regulations on fishing for striped bass. The legislators who were left and liked fishing became alive. That testimony went for on a long time as those left asked fishing questions and it was decided by the end of lengthy questioning about fishing that the best way to catch striped bass was with a single hook.

After dinner the legislators really thinned out and the questions almost stopped. I could no longer tell how many legislators were even left. I finally got to testify at 8:15 p.m. after having listened all day to 10 hours to everyone elses testimony.

Even though my company, Environment and Human Health, Inc., had worked on the Bottle Exemption Bill for over four years and knew a huge amount about it and even though EHHI had worked on the issue of nips which were included in the bottle bill (and should not have been) we were asked NO questions. Everyone was too tired or not even there.

So goes our democracy. Making democracy work is not easy for those who wish to delve into it it is clear democracy is hard work but there is no better way to govern so we will keep at it even when it seems unfair. Unfair or not its better than any other system of government and that seems to be the bottom line.

Nancy Alderman is President ofEnvironment and Human Health, Inc.

CTViewpoints welcomes rebuttal or opposing views to this and all its commentaries. Read our guidelines andsubmit your commentary here.

See the original post here:
Opinion Of striped bass, the bottle bill and democracy via Zoom - The CT Mirror

In my previous article, I described the BJP as a Hindu Democratic Party, in an evidence-based manner by interpreting their recent record of legislative and executive actions.

On this basis, it was demonstrated that they do not even qualify to be considered a traditional right-wing or even traditionally conservative party.

Among interesting feedback to the article was confusion that it implies the BJP is like the Democratic Party of the USA.

This view is wildly off the mark, but it underscores that the default Indian political understanding broadly divides politics into modern liberalism (akin to the US Democrats/British Labour) and traditional conservatism (like the US Republican Party/British Conservatives).

This is a very narrow binary view that does not reflect the reality of Indian politics at all.

A second and very pertinent piece of feedback is that the original article appears to impose a western construct (Christian democracy) upon India. However, thats not quite the case, as this article describes.

Christian democracy is simply an umbrella term for a range of European parties who all have a common imperative with the BJP the preservation of a homeland safe for their faiths, while also maintaining a functional modern democracy, i.e. not a theocracy.

Hindu Democracy : A Form of Liberal Conservatism

The BJPs recent legislative record is wide ranging. Some laws address core political objectives: the elimination of Article 370 and the CAA law and the pursuit of UCC.

Others address reformist goals like the farm laws, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, and the GST. Other recent legislative actions are very liberal minded supporting workers compensation rights, consumer rights, maternity care and abortion rights and transgender rights.

In political science, this is liberal conservatism. The conservative basis is forward looking it just values orderly evolution that focusses on preserving the basic cultural fabric of the land.

If the underlying basis is too rigid, it becomes a right wing traditional polity or theocracy, instead of a liberal conservative entity. Hinduism is a forward- looking religion that enables this.

There is no compromise or hypocrisy in liberal conservatism. The BJPs support, for example, of maternity, abortion or transgender rights is not driven by the modern feminist or LGBT movements.

Those groups are not sole guardians of these rights. Rather, it reflects the fact that Hinduism itself respects women and has never been antagonistic to the third gender; the western approach to these is alien to India; the factual legislative record shows that the BJP has evolved its own independent, native liberal doctrine.

Arguably, the Anglophone liberal versus conservative dichotomy reflects the lack of evolution of polities in both the US and UK, as compared to India.

This backwardness of their politics shows up in the pronounced polarisation of their local politics. Modern democracies in lands with strong cultural moorings have often tended towards liberal conservatism the BJP in India, the Christian Democrats in Germany, Austria and Italy, the LDP in Japan, the Liberal Party in Australia being examples.

Neither the US nor UK have a political party that is avowedly liberal conservative; the only significant party of the kind in the Anglosphere is the Liberal Party of Australia (LP).

The LPs conservatism in Australia was primarily racial Robert Menzies, who was their Prime Minister from 1949-1966, was a strong supporter of the White Australia policy.

The term Hindu Democratic Party is derived from the most well known mainstream form of liberal conservatism involving religion and native culture as a base Christian democracy in Europe.

But why associate the BJP with a western construct at all? This is a very good question. Several features of the western political spectrum simply do not apply to India. Such terminology cannot be carried over wholesale without any nuance.

However, we live in a global world today. As India grows in power and influence, we interact more with the world. It is important to understand how politics is interpreted by the outside world, and to have a well considered description of Indian political mainstream using a best approximation, even if the association cannot be perfect.

Liberal Conservatism: The Dominant Politics of Strongly Rooted Cultures

An interesting behaviour seen post-World War 2 is that all modern democratic nations that have either strong religious or native cultures, or are the punyabhoomi of major faiths, have all developed liberal conservatism as the principal local political form.

In Germany, Konrad Adenauers CDU came to power in 1949, and dominated German politics, having collectively ruled for over 50 of 70 years.

Besides Angela Merkel and Adenauer, Helmut Kohl and Ludwig Erhard are famous Christian Democrats; Merkel and Erhard were practising Lutheran Protestants, the other two Catholics.

In Italy, Alcide de Gasperis Christian Democrats came to power in 1946, and that party continuously ruled until 1981, and then came back to power again a few times.

In Israel, the Likud Party has been the dominant political force since the 1970s, with leaders like Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon and now Benjamin Netanyahu being Likud leaders.

In Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party has dominated postwar politics. Everyone from first PM Shigeru Yoshida to Hayato Ikeda famous for driving their postwar economic miracle to Shinzo Abe were LDP leaders.

In Ireland, a Catholic bastion, the Fine Gael and Fianna Fail founded by their longest serving leader Eamon de Valera have dominated politics.

All these parties have something in common they are liberal conservative ones, and the majority classify themselves as Christian Democratic. Italy and Ireland are homes of Catholicism. Germany the home of Protestantism/Lutheranism, Israel the Jewish homeland and Japan the home of Shintoism.

It is not a coincidence that they all developed analogous polity right upon foundation.

The organic rise of the BJP is a similar story. From a more traditionally conservative origin in the Bharatiya Jan Sangh days, it evolved into a more right wing populist entity and rapidly gained a stable vote share of at least 20 per cent in every general election.

Over the past two decades, it has solidified itself as the principal political pole of India.

Neither the US nor UK have a native faith. While there is a Church of England, that is simply the result of a political split King Henry VIII wanted an annulment but the Vatican wouldnt grant one. So he split and created his own church for convenience.

The US is a young frontier country with a stagnant two-party system.

Hindu Democracy: A Liberal Conservative Approach to Dual Imperatives.

Countries that are both a democratic society and the home of a major faith realise that they also safeguard that faith, while simultaneously managing the uniform policy imperatives of being a modern democratic society.

They all maintain legal secular rights for individuals. However, they all make it clear that politics serves the culture, and not the other way around. Therefore, the dominant culture will always receive a first-among-equals treatment by polity, even when individuals from different faiths are treated alike from the perspective of basic law.

This distinction arises from the fact that politics does not hold a land together. Its culture does. India has a dominant culture thats readily visible to everyone from a natural born person to a stranger looking from outside in.

That culture is Dharmic. India safeguards Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism.

The power of Dharmic culture over polity has demonstrably manifested itself in the fact that the moment the artificial basis of Nehruvian western liberal-socialism weakened, the BJPs liberal conservative polity took hold rapidly within less than two decades.

It has since cemented itself under Narendra Modi, while the Congress has been reduced from over 75 per cent of Lok Sabha to under 10 per cent essentially a large regional party.

A country that had no other basis for socio-political cohesion would simply have fallen apart into civil war, as many countries have. Had India lacked such a basis for cohesion, the end of the Congress would have been the end of the political nation state of India.

However, that did not happen. India has instead politically united into the strongest form in several decades. So much so that assorted wags hyperventilate that India is authoritarian.

Why Did The BJPs Emergence Take So Long ?

Given this political history, a question remains if countries with such strong religious and cultural foundations took a common approach, why didnt India do so at its inception?

At this point it might be somewhat clear it almost did. People like Sardar Patel and S P Mukherjee advocated this path.

One can take a look at the dire situation in 1948-50: Muladi massacre, Barisal riots, Anderson bridge massacre, Sitakunda massacre and more just in Bengal, with even more in Punjab.

Each day brought more grim news.

S P Mukherjee, among others, argued strenuously for a population transfer. Objections to this included the difficulty of transferring crores of people, treatment of property and more; those in favour argued that at least non-Muslims must be allowed to move to India.

Nehru opposed this, with fatal consequences for millions of Hindus. The arguments came to a head when S P Mukherjee quit the government during the Nehru-Liaquat Pact and founded BJPs predecessor the BJS.

Mukherjee later died in custody while protesting the imposition of Article 370. Sardar Patels demise preceded Mukherjees. With its brightest leaders gone, the BJP took another generation to become a political force.

It has not looked back since.

The BJP retains a historical memory of its foundation. Its first two acts upon acquiring the 2019 mandate that gave it reasonable strength in both houses of Parliament, were to deal with two items its founder fought over eliminating Article 370 and passing the Citizenship Amendment Act, which serves to fulfill at least partly, the goal of enabling non-Muslim refugees from partition era lands the ability to gain citizenship in India, as Amit Shah explained.

The current position of strength within Indian polity gives the BJP the opportunity to cast the future of Bharat in the terms it should have always been.

This land is the sacred land and guardian of not merely one but multiple great faiths Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism.

The guardianship of this history and culture cannot be sacrificed at the altar of tactically expedient identity politics. There is much to be done, but it must also be acknowledged that the BJP has been true to its history, and remains the only national party that understands and has the dedication to accomplish the political goal of ensuring that India remains a place where its native faiths and culture can flourish.

Visit link:
Hindu Democracy, Punyabhoomi And The Idea Of Bharat - Swarajya