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In his brilliant op-ed published in Tuesdays Signal, Achievement worth working toward, columnist Joshua Heath describes the profound melancholy he feels at a time in his life when he should be filled with idealism and hope, anxious to plant the seeds of great dreams and better tomorrows having just graduated from UCLA with a graduate degree in political science.

Instead, he finds that America is broken, he writes.

Joshua quotes a recent study from Princeton wherein 1,800 different U.S. policies implemented between 1981 and 2002 were analyzed. The purpose of the study was to see whether the laws passed reflected the wishes of citizens.

The very disturbing truth was that, in almost every instance, our policies reflected the interests of economic elites and big business, not the citizens.

With the passage of Citizens United, powerful, moneyed individuals and corporations have even more control of how legislation is written and passed.

However, we can all work to overcome this appalling situation. We must strive together to remove money from politics!

This will take the many; it will require a public outcry of a gargantuan magnitude.

There are a number of organizations already working toward this goal. These are some of the things we can do to work toward this end:

We can amend the Constitution to overturn the Citizens United decision (see commoncause.org); we can support the American Anti-Corruption Act (check out represent.us) and follow the money on opensecrets.org.

Find and support a group working to get money out of politics so that our elected representatives dont have to worry about getting money from their very first day on the job!

When campaigns are adequately supported by government not private funds, and the publicly owned media provides ample time for all candidates to air their positions without having to raise millions of dollars, our elected officials will again be able to enact laws that reflect the wishes of the people, not the desires of big money.

We can have our democracy back! It will take work, but we can do it.

Lets make our democracy great again!

Sally White Valencia

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Sally White: Make our democracy great again - Santa Clarita Valley Signal

The Japanese government has passed a law that it claims is designed to punish anyone plotting or preparing to carry out a terrorist attack in the country, although the legislation has immediately been criticized by the UN and analysts who describe it as placing "handcuffs on democracy and civil liberties."

The "conspiracy law" was passed by the Diet in an ill-tempered session that went into the early hours of Thursday morning, with thousands of protestors outside the building chanting slogans against the legislation, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

Despite being heavily outnumbered in the chamber, the opposition parties put up a staunch fight against the legislation and were outraged when the government announced that it would by-pass a vote in the Upper House, accusing Abe of attempting to prevent the details of the bill from being closely examined.

PM Abe claimed the legislation was necessary to prevent terrorist attacks in the run-up to and during the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games

Renho, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party, described the government's tactic as the "ultimate form of railroading."

Abe, who survived a no-confidence motion against his government shortly after the conspiracy bill was enacted, claimed the legislation was necessary to prevent terrorist attacks in the run-up to and during the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.

Olympics explanation

"It is only three years until the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics and I would like to ratify the treaty on organized crime as soon as possible so we can firmly cooperate with international society to prevent terrorism," Abe said.

Read:Mass protests in Tokyo against controversial military bills

Critics claim, however, that while the law has given the authorities the capability to prosecute 277 crimes as a conspiracy, few appear to have any directly link to terrorism. Instead, they point out, the statutes outlaw discussing going hunting for mushrooms in conservation areas, forging postage stamps, sit-in demonstrations and organizing an unlicensed bicycle race.

"This legislation has just given the police here sweeping new powers to crack down on all sorts of activities that, as far as I can see, have absolutely nothing to do with organized crime or terrorism," said Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies at the Japan campus of Temple University.

"The government has ignored parliamentary procedures to ram this through and I believe that most Japanese will be incredulous at the law as it has been delivered," Kingston told DW. "This can be used to curtail a person's right to privacy, the right to express dissent, the right to know and a person's freedom of expression."

"They have placed handcuffs on democracy and civil liberties, and the ultimate irony is that they claim to be doing it in the interests of protecting people," he added.

Celebration in the Japanese capital: Tokyo won the rights to host the 2020 Summer Olympic Games after defeating fellow bidder Istanbul 60 to 36 votes in a second round of secret voting. Madrid, the other city competing to host the XXXII Olympiad, had been surprisingly eliminated in the first round of voting.

The decision was also met with elation by the Japanese Olympic delegation in Buenos Aires. After wiping off tears of joy, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who flew to the Argentinian capital from the G20 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, said: "By hosting the 2020 Tokyo Games, we will create hope."

Tokyo has promised 'compact Games' for athletes, fans and journalists, with 85 percent of the Olympic venues located only eight kilometers away from the Olympic Village, and hence in the heart of the city.

"Discover tomorrow" is the slogan of the 2020 Games. Future-oriented is also design of the Olympic Stadium by the Iraqi-British star architect Zaha Hadid, which is now set to be realized.

So far, the Olympic Village only exists on paper, or to be exact, in pixels. This graphic shows the concept of the organizers: The 44-hectare village complex is to be constructed in the vicinity of the Ginza shopping and entertainment district and house some 17,000 beds.

The current crisis at the crippled nuclear plant in Fukushima nearly cost Tokyo the Games. On election day, PM Abe had to reassure the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that the situation was under control. Fukushima lies some 225 kilometers (140 miles) north of the Japanese capital.

Tokyo is more than just a city, it is rather a country, considering that it is home to some nine million people, according to the latest population census. About 35 million people reside in the larger metropolitan area. This is only made possible through the city's numerous skyscrapers.

In almost no other city on Earth are there so many people on the move as in Tokyo. The megacity has been praised for having a good transport network which is put to the test daily by millions of traffic participants. Around 80 percent of the people in the Japanese capital use trains such as this one transiting on the Yurikamome line.

Tokyo's first Olympic Games were held in 1964, after being canceled in 1940 due to WWII. 5151 athletes from 93 countries took part in the event, which was opened by Emperor Hirohito.

The Olympic Flame is coming back to Tokyo. Yoshinori Sakai, born in Hiroshima on the day the atomic bomb was dropped on the city, lit the flame in 1964, sending out a message for world peace.

Author: Joscha Weber / gd

Previous attempts

The government has attempted to pass similar conspiracy bills four times previously, but all have fallen short in the Diet. To ensure this version won parliament's approval, the number of crimes it specified was reduced and the government played up the threat that terrorists pose to the safety of the 2020 Olympic Games. It also insists the new legislation was necessary to enable Japan to ratify the 2000 UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime.

Critics are far from convinced that the wide-ranging regulations will not simply be used to gag anyone who speaks out against the authorities in any way.

"The government is creating a surveillance state and has declared 277 new reasons for the authorities to be able to tap a telephone or carry out surveillance on someone," Kingston said.

"And there is a strong case for this legislation to be compared to the notorious 1925 Peace Preservation Law, which was used by the government of the day to round up communists and set Japan down the dark road to the militarism of the 1930s," he underlined.

And that ties into Abe's desire to rewrite the constitution, which conservatives believe was imposed upon a defeated Japan by the vengeful Allies after the war. A section of the constitution echoes the 1948 International Declaration of Human Rights, although the LDP's 2012 manifesto said that section should be replaced with a passage that imposes duties and obligations on the Japanese people.

Read:Can Japan stub out its smoking habit?

Criticism from the UN

Other critics of the law include the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, while Joseph Cannataci, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to privacy warned in May that the broad terms of the law could be interpreted equally broadly and lead to undue restrictions on privacy and freedom of expression.

Yet others say the concerns are being blown out of proportion.

"The reason the opposition is so angry is because it is the job of the opposition to be angry and claim that this is part of a plot to plunge Japan back into pre-war militarism," said Jun Okumura, a political analyst at the Meiji Institute for Global Affairs.

"The important thing to remember is that to counter the weight of the government there is a need for an independent judiciary, an independent public prosecutor's office and a robust and free media, and Japan has all those things," he told DW.

"I do not see any practical fallout from the introduction of this new law," he added. "It would take a sea-change in Japan's security environment and social cohesion for things to get so bad that the government would do what the opposition is suggesting they will use this law to do. It won't happen."

View post:
Japan's new conspiracy law 'puts handcuffs on democracy' - Deutsche Welle

Express-News Editorial Board

Photo: PAUL J. RICHARDS /AFP /Getty Images

An attack on democracy, on all of us

There is much we dont know about the shooting Wednesday at a GOP congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia. But we know enough to suspect that the tone and tenor of our current political disagreements are acting as an unhealthy accelerant for what were already-over-the-top passions.

We know the lone gunman, who shot and wounded five before he was killed in a shootout, made his anti-Trump sentiments known on social media. And we know his victims were Republican members of a congressional baseball team. In other words, members of the same party as President Donald Trump.

We know that the shooter identified as James T. Hodgkinson, 66, from Belleville, Illinois reportedly posted this: Trump is a traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. Its Time to Destroy Trump & Co. Hodgkinsons brother said he was very distraught over Trumps election. He was apparently a volunteer in the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, who condemned the shooting.

And we know that Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-South Carolina, was asked by a man he believes was the gunman about the party affiliation of the practicing team. He replied Republican.

Among those shot was House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana, two law enforcement officials, an aide for Texas GOP Rep. Roger Williams and a lobbyist for Tyson Foods.

In a statement, the president said, We may have our differences, but we do well in times like these to remember that everyone who serves in our nations capital is here because, above all, they love our country.

Wed broaden that definition of people who love their country to include most Americans why the need to calm our disagreements are necessary.

But this shooting is different in a noteworthy way.

The shooting is reminiscent of the one that claimed U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Tucson, as a victim in 2011. She survived with brain injury, but six were killed in that shooting. The gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, was ultimately judged incompetent, didnt stand trial and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He was reportedly fixated on Giffords, though his specific motives remain unclear.

But a theme was present in Wednesdays shooting, as it was in the one that claimed Giffords as a victim. Among those shot was a U.S. representative.

Any shooting of any innocent person is a tragedy. When the victims are those elected to serve us, this is an attack not just on individuals but on our democracy. While its clear that the 2011 Tucson shooting was an assassination attempt, its less clear if Scalise was the intended target or just a random victim at a GOP gathering.

Nonetheless, the fact that he was shot is noteworthy. Intended or not, this was an attack on our system of government.

We live in a time of conflict, of deep divisions about the president and about political ideology generally. The proper channels for such disagreements are the ballot box, free speech that entitles us to voice our disagreements, our institutions of checks and balances, and values that say we can have such disagreements and all be equally American.

There is, however, a lot of us and them plaguing the country. Among the more recent examples: deadly attacks on two brave men in Portland defending a young girl wearing a hijab; and the shooting of two Indian men in a bar in Kansas, killing one.

The culprit here is not the left, nor in previous shootings the right. It is that deranged extremist who believes that grievance channeled through the barrel of a gun is acceptable. It is not. Not in America. Not anywhere.

See more here:
An attack on democracy, on all of us - mySanAntonio.com

When I caught the story of the mass shooting yesterday (and yes, I know, in my country, we need to specify which mass shooting yesterday, so I mean the mass shooting of Republican congressmen in Virginia, not the one in San Francisco, or any of the other 154 that have happened so far this year), I immediately feared what turned out to be truethat some crazy had targeted a group of politicians because of their politics. And so saddened by all that meant, I tweeted an expression of condolence:

For me, the phrase we are all _____ today ties forever to 9/11. Of all the reactions to the horror of that day, the one that moved me the most were rallies around the worldespecially by people who otherwise dont like us at allstanding with us, in empathy. That empathy didnt say we agree with you. It said, this is not how humans treat humans.

That is precisely the empathy that I felt yesterday. Though I was once a Republican when I was a kid, I am now as fierce a critic of the leadership of the Republican Party as any. Beginning with the man who broke Congress, Newt Gingrich, I believe the GOP leadership is responsible for every terrible innovation that has crippled Congress (though, in fairness, the Democrats have quickly followed their lead). Gingrich transformed the job of a Congressman into the job of a fundraiser, sucking up to great power and wealth. His party turned the idea of impeachment into partisan war by other means. What that party did during the Obama administration was outrageous. What they did to Merrick Garland was constitutionally criminal. And the refusal (of almost all of them) to stand up to the disaster that is Trump will be remembered as one of the greatest acts of moral cowardice and political weakness in the history of democracy anywhere.

But what happened yesterday is not how humans treat humans. Whatever their views, it is barbarically wrong to answer difference with death. And when a crazy person does as that crazy person did on a baseball field in Virginia, we should all stand as one and condemn that barbaric act. Not because we agree with the victims of the crime, but because we so emphatically disagree with violence as speech.

Those words strike me as so true as to be banal. Who could possibly disagree with that?

Well, it turns out, the ever-amazing Twitter can.

As I went to bed last night, I was cued by an email from a friend to the tweet-storm my banality had triggered. Heres just a sample. This search will give you the full pull.

In the almost decade since I joined Twitter, nothing I have ever tweeted has ever triggered a reaction as extreme as these 46 characters did. But every other time that something I tweeted did evoke such anger, in the end, I came to agree with the anger, and believe I had made a mistake.

Not this time, Twitter. No, this time, Twitter, the mistake is yours.

This reaction is not just party over country. It is party over humanity. And somehow, the technology has helped to bring us to this place. For all the incredible sophistication that our advanced culture has given us, it has somehow become too difficult for people to express the ideahey, your views are backwards and wrong, and they will cause great harm to millions as well as the planet, but I am sorry that your kind was slaughtered by a madman (165 characters!). Or more precisely, what the technology has done is prime us to tribalism firstthe need to scream with every passing event, hey, Im still with us and I still hate them. Understanding or empathy is too complicated for this medium. What if someone thinks by expressing sorrow for slaughter, I actually dont believe #BlackLivesMatter? What if my empathy gets confused with my being soft on global warming deniers?

Democracy is the technology we have for living with people with whom we disagree. That technology needs norms. One of those norms is treating others decently. Decency includes the capacity to understand and to empathize. Without that capacity, we cannot be democrats. Not democrats as in versus Republicans. But democrats as in people who believe and practice the project of democracy.

Maybe this is why the brilliant Ev Williams, who helped give us Twitter, has now taken up the project of Medium. I so hope he is successful. But I fear that the 77,747 impressions (and reactions) my hashtag has evoked so far (and yes, theres a utility for calculating that) will overwhelm the few thousand who would ever read this far into a post.

That saddens me. Too. We are #AllRepublicansToday, because we must #AllBecomeSmallDdemocrats again.

It may not be possible. But we have to try. Schadenfreude should never be an American word. It should especially not be a Twitter wordand not just because it is 9.3% of the length of a tweet (and yes, theres a utility for calculating that too). It is only a word of the weak and cowardly.

Weakness is not what we need now. We need strengthnot just to defeat Republicans at the ballot box, but more importantly, to rebuild the possibility of a democracy again.

Originally posted here:
Dear Twitter: FWIW, this is how you spell democracy: EMPATHY - NewCo Shift

June 15, 2017 MoscowSince becoming Russia's top leader almost two decades ago, Vladimir Putin has developed various methods of talking to the Russian public over the heads of other institutions and authorities, with the aim of establishing a problem-solving dialogue directly with the people.

Best known of these is his annual Direct Line telethon, the latest iteration of which happens Thursday. In the event, Mr. Putin answers questions from linked studio audiences around the country, as well as emailed and SMS queries. He often directly addresses acute social problems such as inter-ethnic relations, solves people's personal problems on-the-spot, and even discloses intimate details of his personal life.

But the TV spectacle is only the tip of the iceberg one that the Kremlin is hoping to grow into a wired-up, ultra-modern open society in which citizens will be able to deliver their grievances, petitions, and legislative initiatives in person to their leaders without having to depend on the mediation of 20th century institutions like legislatures, opinion polls, or the media.

Now, as a new presidential election looms, the Kremlin is looking hard at indications such as extremely low voter turnout in last September's parliamentary elections that suggest Russia's electorate is losing faith in the existing system. In response, it is intensifying its embrace of digital innovations that claim to fix the problems.

Even some critics say the idea has promise. Everything is changing in the world, not just Russia, says Vlada Muravyova, an adviser to the Civic Initiatives Committee headed by liberal ex-Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. There's new technology, the younger generation is becoming active and people are dissatisfied with classical channels of communication. Decision-making should be quicker, and public participation stepped up....

But, the critics add, the Kremlin's plan has come amid concerted measures to limit genuine electoral competition, to prune the media landscape, and to sideline independent public opinion polling. It's good to have mechanisms for bringing new initiatives to the attention of government, Ms. Muravyova says. Though, the initiatives are one thing, and what officials do with them are quite another.

The effort to build a network of alternative channels for top authorities to interface directly with the public is as old as the Putin era.

As he prepared to return to the Kremlin for his third term in 2012, Putin issued a series of public "manifestos" to set forth the policies he intended to follow. One of the least-noticed of these was a lengthy blueprint for building a "participatory democracy" using the latest information technology, published in the Moscow daily Kommersant.

"It is necessary to adjust the mechanisms of the political system so that it captures and reflects the interests of social groups in a timely way, and ensures that those interests are addressed," Putin wrote. "That would not only increase the legitimacy of the authorities, but also people's confidence that they act fairly.... We must be able to respond to the demands of society, which are growing increasingly complicated and, in the information age, are acquiring fundamentally new features."

While the annual TV spectacle is arguably the most overt such effort, the many thousands of queries, criticisms, and grievances that pour in to the show most of which, despite the typically four-hour program length, do not get aired are carefully collected, collated, and analyzedby the Kremlin to determine broad currents of public opinion and identify sore points that might require further action.

Last month Putin moved to apply that approach beyond the telethon, by mandating the presidential service to collect and analyze all citizens' appeals and petitions, and then redistribute them downward with orders for lower levels of government to deal with them.

The main agency responsible for organizing and maintaining this ambitious digital project to reinvent government is the Information Democracy Foundation, a nonprofit organization that says it is funded by various Russian IT firms, and headed byIlya Massukh, a former deputy minister of communications.

Reached by telephone, Mr. Massukh said that e-democracy is not intended to substitute for established institutions but to supplement them and provide new tools for overcoming the notorious inertia of Russian bureaucracy.

"Democracy is not in the genes of Russians, so these new ways of communicating directly between government and society offers a real chance to move forward," he says. "It's a logical step, and President Putin is quite serious about using new technology to improve management. He is a big supporter of e-government."

But Russia's formal political system established by the constitution, with its autonomous institutions such as parliament, is being eroded purposefully as the Kremlin seeks greater and more direct power, says Nikolai Petrov, a professor of political science at Moscow's Higher School of Economics.

"But, obviously, something new must be invented to create the impression of close contact with Russian citizens, who are becoming more sophisticated in many ways," he says. "So the Kremlin is developing various methods of getting feedback from society, bypassing not only elections, but also regional authorities, whose [communiques to the Kremlin] are no longer seen as reliable."

In 2013, the Kremlin ordered Massukh's Foundation to set up an internet portal, called the Russian Public Initiative, which boasts that it has since posted over 10,000 petitions on its website. Each appeal purportedly originates from a grassroots source, and can be voted upon directly by website visitors. When a petition addressed to Moscow authorities reaches 100,000 votes, for example, it will be forwarded to an "expert panel" to determine what action should be taken. It's no guarantee that the appeal will be granted.

One example is a grassroots petition asking authorities to cancel the "Yarovaya Law," a sweeping set of anti-extremism measures that accord vast powers to security services and severely limit civil rights, including those for religious minorities. The petition was adopted and forwarded for consideration to the authorities with a request to cancel the law. Not mentioned on the site is the fact that the "expert panel" rejected the petition, finding the law fully in conformity with the Russian constitution, though it ruled that some amendments might be considered in future.

"The Russian Public Initiative was supposed to become a platform of true 'people's power,' a means of self-organization for citizens that offers the government and parliament ways to correct errors," says Anita Soboleva, a member of the Kremlin's Human Rights Commission. "After a while it became obvious that it doesn't work as such a channel, because even those initiatives that got enough votes were never turned over to the competent authorities to be considered."

She argues the key problem with all this electronic paper shuffling is that everything comes back to the same old officials, who now may have more work to do, but are as free as ever to ignore, punt, or misrepresent the public's complaints.

"All proposals are sinking in a viscous ooze," she says. "Officials may just write that they have, indeed, studied, analyzed and summarized [the public inputs], but find it impossible or impractical to make any changes, or require more time to sum up, clarify, specify, etc. There is not really any more genuine communication than there used to be."

Read the rest here:
Russia as a sort of cyber-democracy? The Kremlin is giving it a shot. - Christian Science Monitor