One World, Many Peaces

Al Franken and Ahmadinejad Have Court-Run Democracy in Common

The dramatic increase in court-won elections worldwide in recent years is proving to be a pivotal issue in deciding who is and stays in power, and in this sense Al Franken and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have a lot in common. This transformation of democratic victories from free elections to the application of rules and regulations by the courts hit a high profile point with Bush and Florida in 2000 but has since become a political plateau that risks shaking the very foundation of liberal principles, especially those conservatives depend on most.

Comparing the statements made by the Minnesota judges in the Franken case and that made by Iranian Guardian Council makes all too clear the unabashed power of court intervention in deciding victors of 'democratic' elections. "Based on Iran's constitution, the Guardian Council is the top legislative body to review complaints over the election," says Abbasali Kadkhodai, the Council's official spokesman. "The council members have unanimously approved the election result." Unanimity is not democracy.

The judges in the Franken case also approved their decision unanimously, saying in their  official statement that "because strict compliance with the statutory requirements for absentee voting is, and always has been required, there is no basis on which voters could have reasonably believed that anything less than strict compliance would suffice." Although it is unlikely that protests will erupt in the Midwest as they did in the Middle East, they would both have the selfsame cause.

What the two cases have in common aside from the fact that they were decided by judges on technicalities pales in comparison to what makes them different: one is based on the US Constitution, the other on Islamic law.  Or maybe, when it comes to deciding elections, they are not so different after all, a real possibility which all democracies like them in the world need to confront head on or risk ceasing to be the vehicles of the people's will they were designed to be. Judges implement laws, not people's wills, and therein lies the rub.

When democracy rests almost entirely on a set of rules and regulations devised by those in power and implemented by judges placed by them, democracy stops meaning free elections or rule by the people and begins to mean automated bureaucracies devoid of relations to people's needs and aspirations. The Roman Republic was for the vast majority of its existence a totalitarian regime in disguise, which court-run democracies as current events creating the future portend.

Global Green Tech Rivalries Provide Model for Competitive Peacemaking

'Green race' must now be added to the notions of 'space race' and 'arms race': global competition between nations and their associations for supremacy in environmentally sound technology. China, Japan and Korea will unite in a pledge to cooperate to become worldwide leaders in green tech next month, opening possibilities for other kinds of beneficial 'races' to come, notably in peace and peacemaking.

"A new paradigm of qualitative growth which uses less energy and is more compatible with environmental sustainability" is what Korean Prime Minister Han Seung-Soo is seeking by devoting 81% of the country's economic stimulus package to green initiatives. In contrast, the fuel-fossil based industrial economy of the US will receive a green booster shot of only 12%. China and Japan, between these figures, only add momentum to Asia's speed in the green race.

Developing and commercializing green tech is easier when you're flushed with cash already, like Korea and China are and Japan seeks to be as a result of the race. Even European nations, not so well off, have embraced carbon trading. All the US has and is providing is green rhetoric and GE-type ecomagination, neither of which should be underestimated. Put together, all of this points to a "new paradigm" beyond Han Seung-Soo's green dreams.

The point I am making is that the very same buttons being pushed in this global green tech rivalry can readily be used in global peace and peacemaking. Imagine countries competing, racing to end conflicts quickly and permanently, provide basic necessities and establish viable infrastructures, what is called 'peace-building' today. Then, imagine them competing for friends on Facebook as on electronic commodities and stock exchanges. Sound crazy?

It shouldn't because that's what green tech companies do now, when just a few years ago they were 'tree-hugging hippies', and will only do more of as the green race becomes a sprint. A Time Magazine columnist calls these green rivalries 'green wars'; as current events creating the future, let them never be won or lost and spark others. Survival is itself a race for peace.

Appalled by Iranian Protest Crackdown more than by One Billion Hungry People

Foreign police forces confronting teenage-like rebelliousness apparently makes for more advertizing revenue and moral posturing than starving babies, children and parents. With world news fixated on the Iranian protests more for their dramatic than political value, much too little attention is being paid to the announcement late last week that over one billion people worldwide are hungry. One billion, or a seventh of our species, more than ever previously recorded. One billion.

Facile as it is to feign impotent outrage as the first step in trying to forget this horrification, even fathoming its scale is difficult without being a demographer. The cause is not an easily identifiable singular event, say election fraud or street violence, but rather a systemic mismanagement on both local and global levels that is nearly invisible to all but its victims and perpetuators. This is why last week's announcement is so important, and disappeared so astonishingly quickly.

No single terrorist act, no mass protest or government crackdown is as scary and potentially effective as the prospect of one billion people hungry enough to risk life for food. Exacerbated by the economic crisis in the range of 100 million empty stomachs, hunger is currently the greatest impediment to world peace collectively, to say nothing of the individual peace of the sufferers and that of the societies in which they live and which fail them. Fighting for rights with a full belly is irreconcilably different from being hardly able to because more basic needs are not being met.

What we are appalled by says as much about us as the values we profess, and yes I am referring to Obama's statement today. The officials who broke the one billion hungry people news in Rome stressed the broken link between hunger and peace: soaring prices for staples such as rice triggered riots in the developing world last year. The Iranian protests and crackdown will seem like playground games if one billion hungry people globally revolt in desperation. Meanwhile, we must guard against misplacing our revulsion.

As I contend in the Pyramid of Peace presented as the conclusion of Peace: A World History, nutrition is the cornerstone of world peace, as of all individuals, societies and collectives. And so one billion hungry people is a grossly ignored current event creating a dangerous but preventable future.

Obama Administration Corruption and Activist Indexing Measurements

If measuring corruption is the first step towards reducing it, then a comparative index of corruption is at least the next three, as the Corruption Perceptions Index makes clear. Why? Because assessing to what degree a government or country is corrupt, such as the Obama administration and the US more generally, provides less of an impetus for change than knowing who their nearest and best competitors are in the same fields of error.

The annual Corruption Perceptions Index, first released  in 1995, is widely credited with putting the issue of corruption on the international policy agenda according to its producers, Transparency International. "The Index ranks 180 countries by their perceived levels of corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys." So, to be clear, the Index does not measure how corrupt countries are, but how people who study them for a living perceive them to be. 

Nevertheless, the results are both intriguing and indicative. In 2008, Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden shared the highest score (lowest corruption), while Somalia, Iraq and Myanmar ranked bottom (highest corruption). As the US ranked only in the upper middle tier during Bush's presidency, the Index could become a key indicator of the Obama administration's success or failure in fulfilling the campaign promise to "clean up government" at home. Considering the US' global involvements, we may add abroad.

The Corruption Perceptions Index, like the Global Peace Index and others, belong to a still new breed of entrepreneurial knowledge creation and dissemination ventures that seek change second only to accuracy. The term activist indexing is meant to distinguish from other 'neutral' indexing practices long in use, such as stock indexes on the basis of industry, region or market capitalization. Taking this comparison further is telling in that it opens up constructive possibilities.

The impact of trading on the monetization of activist indexes, such as futures or options contracts on placement predictions for a government or country, is a compelling idea but not yet reality. Profit would thus become an enemy of corruption and other indexed vices, a dream Obama had his American electors and global supporters believing during his campaign. Yet a practical and philosophical problem remains, for me, with not addressing the historically immense overlap between corruption as evil and governments getting things done as good.

There may soon come a time when all collective characteristics we seek to perpetuate or eliminate will be indexed as a means to their accomplishment. It is in this light that activist indexes and indexers, as influential current events creating the future, are pioneers not only in the quantitative statistical technologies they use directly, but also in the qualitative modalities of societal improvement they are indirectly developing.

'BRIC' to Counter Western Bloc as Brazil, Russia, India and China Join Forces

Five major emerging economies are joining forces to create a coalition that may have no rival at present, historically or in the foreseeable future. Their acronym is BRIC, strongly suggesting an object that may soon smash the Western block's cracked and cracking glass house called the global economy, for better or worse. Calling any other formal economic coalition-- the EU, APEC, NAFTA, etc.-- ever formed "small potatoes" would be an overstatement.

As powerhouses separately, BRIC members combined could soon exceed even the impact of the Anglo-American alliance that created the World Bank and Internal Monetary Fund. With weighty ambiguities remaining after their recent inaugural meeting, whether or not BRIC will flex its muscles within or against these Breton Woods institutions is hard to tell, if they will collectively at all. These economic considerations leave out the facts that all except Brazil are nuclear powers, military mights and brokers of world politics as well.

In any case, the specter BRIC poses is full of paradoxical potentials: a balance to Western world dominance or a co-conspirator; a wiser or exponentially more volatile competitor; a partner with Cold War bones to pick or a skeletal public relations tactic; a way to gett the world off its US-dollar dependency or stay on? If these questions don't create an existential angst for concerned global citizens of any country, few will.

Strangely enough, the notion of BRIC was put forth five years ago in a report by investment bank Goldman Sachs. Indicating just how much economic power BRIC has, meaning how much freedom in any course they may choose to take and forcing others to go along: China has foreign exchange reserves of more than $1.5 trillion, Russia more than $500 billion, India close to $300 billion and Brazil around $200 billion.

The scale of the Scramble for Central Asia, pitting Europe's Eastern Partnership against China's formerly single-handed efforts, has just been tipped. BRIC, as a current event creating the future, has shown that to notions of constellations of nations must be added overlapping galaxies of their associations.