A shameful dictator

Our little dictator does not give a damn about life -among many other reasons due to his close contacts with the mafia-, though he says he will do anything he can to keep alive an Italian citizen who has been in a coma for the last 17 years and who had previously expressed his will to be let die if she ever encountered herself in that situation. Our little dictator does not give a damn about freedom, for the same reason, nor has the least degree of respect for others, since he insulted repeatedly her father, accusing him of a vile attempted murder because keeping her daughter alive apparently would be costing him a lot of money. Our little dictator does not give a damn about the separation of powers in a democratic State, since he is willing to reverse the rulings of the Italian Supreme Court overnight -something the parliament cannot do-, to govern by decree, threatening the members of government who do not agree with him, and to change the Italian Constitution also overnight, that is, he is willing to confront any constitutional powers who oppose his decision to keep this individual alive at all costs. Our little dictator does not give a damn about legality, in this case or in any other case, since his self-proclaimed goal is to change Italian political structures in order the government -that is, him- faces no constitutional hurddles to impose its ruling. This comes as no surprise, since he entered politics to change every single law that could get him in jail due to his endless number of illegalities while running his businesses. Our little dictator is a successful man, since he has managed to change all these democratic rules and stay out of jail despite the hundreds of legal processes he has been involved in. Our little dictator does not give a damn about christian morality, since he has publicly acknowledged to have broken every possible catholic principle a number of times, those regarding with sexual fidelity in particular, yet he did not hesitate to always align his policies with the official positions of the Vatican -which does not care at all if he is a sinner, a thief or a murderer if he can help the institution to upheld its power-, Italy having the most regressive social legislation in Western Europe as a result. Our little dictator does not give a damn about women since, among many other reasons, he has repeatedly justified rape, saying happily in recent times, for example, that nothing can be done about it since the Italian women are the ‘più belle delle mondo’.

Shame on our little dictator. Shame on everyone who voted for him throughout these years. Shame on the political parties conforming the so called opposition, which are not able to defend dignity, legality and truth in front of this liberticide who mocks any conceivable kind of freedom and human decency.

Photo © tulipanonero

It´s Afghanistan, stupid!

Following what President Obama stated during his campaign, the new American administration has started shifting its foreign policy efforts away from Irak to focus on Afghanistan. Along with a deployment of additional troops, however, comes the news that the administration is seriously considering displacing Afghan President Karzai from government, in favor of some new and apparently more reliable and potentially effective candidates.

Despite the corruption cases in Karzai´s government, and the presence of warlords both in the national and local administration, the US should not involve itself in the daily political management of the country. On the one hand, it comes as no surprise corruption is thriving in one of the poorer countries on earth; on the other hand President Karzai had to co-opt certain warlords as the only way to mantain peace and keep some provinces (more or less) under Kabul´s rule. Politics in Afghanistan is a chaotic and undemocratic business but, what were we in the Western world expecting after a 30 years war in a country that always remained stuck in a sort of economic and social Middle Ages? What do we expect after failing to live up to our promises to assist them with substantial economic and financial help and the deployment of enough troops to guarantee peace in the country? We are helping them, somehow, though this is far from enough, and also far from what we committed ourselves to do, but nevertheless our patience is running out with countries such as Afghanistan, which do not democratize at the pace we want them to become Jeffersonian democracies.

After the tragic failure of the ill-conceived experiment in Irak, it should be clear for everyone that Afghanistan is the primary token if the West is to be trusted in its claims to be working to bring democracy and prosperity to countries that still enjoy no political freedom. If we are to succeed here, both in our terms -international security and democratic principles- and in theirs -Afghans are asking for our help to build a peaceful, viable State-, we should devote our efforts not to the realm of micro-politics but to building capacities, that is, infraestructure, roads, hospitals, schools, telecommunications, police, internal safety, law enforcement, market development, criminal justice, women´s health, education and protection… All this implies devoting money and personnel, and lots of it, but also trusting locals and working with them in identifiying their own needs, as opposed to imposing our goals. Only as a consecuence of a long term economic and social transformation could this place start its journey towards a viable, sustainable and fair democracy. We cannot change overnight what has remained like this for ages. We cannot allow ourselves to be inpatient. We should be ready to commit ourselves for a long time. It is worth it, and not only for Afghanistan itself and their inhabitants, but also as an example of what we are willing to do to help other countries and even as a proof of the coherence between our beliefs and our democracy promotion efforts.

Photo: ‘Kabul, Afghanistan’, 2009 © Lyndsey Addario, The New York Times

A double-edged Olympic sword

As a part of a diplomatic offensive this week, the Chinese government has criticized American human rights record, poverty and racial divides, after the American Department of State only mildly critiziced Chinese human rights abuses, and even erased the country from the list of the serious human rights abuses, to the outrage of international human rights NGO´s. China´s protest constitutes a shameful and hypocritical move, since China´s performance in these fields is among the worst in the planet. The offensive tries to counteract Western condemnation of Chinese human rights abuses just before the Olympic Games in Beijing. China has staked enormously in the gigantic public relations operation the Games amount to, whose aim is to show the world how far has China reached in its quest for development. However, the idea Chinese officials have in mind when thinking about development may have nothing to do with the image it conjures up for the Westerner, since the latter includes not only living conditions but also freedom and respect for individuals, whereas the former just points to a kind of competition to attain material and technological goals. In other words, it is all about national pride, a very Asian concept, by the way.

The Olympic Games should have never been granted to China, probably the most serious human rights violator in the world. Once the appropriate international bodies took the decision, the only action left for democratic governments and peoples is to actively boycott them. And for the boycott to be really effective, it should be a widespread Western decision, regardless the Chinese reaction to it. During the Cold War, the Moscow 1980 Olympic Games Western boycott did not lead us to the Third World War; if anything, it contributed to the Soviet regime´s collapse. Moreover, China needs Western markets desperatedly, so here we have a powerful tool to exert influence on the country. And to those claiming we should not mix sports with politics, let us note an event such as the Olympic Games is one of the best examples of global politics nowadays. Besides, the political nature of the Games is officially recorgnized by the Chinese government, which rightly weighted the huge opportunities to improve its international image the gathering offered. However, when betting on the Games, Chinese officials seemed oblivious to the fact that in our globalized world, they are a double-edged sword. Therefore, a big-scale fiasco would project a multiplied image of incompetence, corruption and, ultimately, backwardness. That would imply losing face, again, a very important concept in Asian cultures.

It is this multiplier effect we need to take advantage of to expose China´s abusive public policies towards its own citizens, raise awareness about its immoral international behaviour -i.e.: its role in the Darfur crisis-, and show our solidarity with Chinese dissidents and human rights activists. No one is denying China its right to economic and social development, but the Free World -a Cold War expression which is nevertheless relevant today, unfortunately- should send a clear message: if the Chinese government wants its country to be accepted as a major actor in the international community, it should respect life, freedom, and human rights.

Read on:

Human Rights Watch last report on China´s abuses on Beijing´s migrant construction workers.

On China´s disastrous environmental record.

On China´s international public relations setbacks as a consecuence of the Olympic Games exposure.

On Chinese officials defending China´s stand in Darfur and criticizing the Olympics tie-in.

Photo: Woman holding a dog, Beijing, 2007 © Nataliebehring

The convictions of a libertarian candidate

Reading some of the opinions about a variety of issues of one of the American presidential candidates, you may think we are no longer living in the 21st century and travelled back in a time machine to the age of the American founding fathers. You cannot accuse Republican congressman Ron Paul of flip-flopping or dithering about his principles. However, in the words of this Texan libertarian, Thomas Jefferson and Ronald Reagan become strange bedfellows. Paul claims governments are the biggest threat to freedom, thus the need to reduce their size as much as possible and devolve decision powers to citizens in nearly every realm of social life. This includes upholding the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which allows American citizens to keep and bear arms, and reapeling every single piece of legislation devised to put into effect that right in the case of assault weapons or psychopaths. What Paul eschews to acknowledge -it would go against its libertarian beliefs-, and many other libertarians as well, is that the sole purpose of arms is to kill or wound, that we no longer live under tyrannical regimes -though far from perfect, we have devised institutions to help us have a say in what is being done to us and in our name-, that we no longer require armed militias to defend ourselves from our own government, that modern, functioning democracies are not just examples of ‘majoritarianism’, and that if we want to keep social order we better grant the state the monopoly of violence and then try to control it with reasonable checks.

Paul makes sharp and appropriate comments regarding government´s meddling in our private affairs (i.e.: the war on drugs) and, as other libertarians and classic liberals before him, the limits and failures of government intervention in many areas of public life, but fails to identify the present and future challenges to our freedom and our welfare, which do not come from democratically elected governments whose actions are subjected to the rule of law. Also, he does not recognize we may not fight many forms of discrimination in our modern societies with liberalization and free markets alone, and that some sort of government action is needed. True, governments may end up worsening the very problems they tried to solve -for instance, he is right at stating governments are exacerbating the problem of ethnocultural relations with their notions of ‘multiculturalism’-, but that is not an argument per se against public policies -to follow with our example, doing nothing will not improve social and economic integration-. Those challenges and threats -global terror, climate change, mass migrations, AIDS and other diseases, failed states, some forms of discrimination or how to bring the benefits of globalization to many world regions, to name but a few- are best meet with a flexible combination of private entrepreneurship and the accompanying role of a limited, effective government constrained by national and international laws (Paul is a self-proclaimed and extreme isolationist who advocates the U.S. withdrawing from or opposing institutions such as the UN, the NAFTA Agreement or the International Criminal Court).

Our libertarian candidate makes yet other remarks (i.e: against abortion, against federal funding for stem cells research and other comments on religion) that have nothing to do with liberalism. I am interested in knowing about his ideas on gay marriage or euthanasia, though I may easily guess at them. I claim these particular views make him a conservative, like scores of others who purport to be (classic) liberals but actually defend the status quo and despise certain lifestyles they dissaprove.

Ron Paul´s official website

Photo: Ron Paul © The Ithacan

The same old story: Uganda and Zimbabwe

A contemporary observer gives the following account of Idi Amin´s ousting of Asians from Uganda after his arrival in power in 1971:

Traders from the Far and Middle East have been coming to East Africa for centuries. Until the 1970s, South Asians ran most of Uganda’s businesses, factories, and sugar and cotton mills; they built many of the towns, taught in the university, and owned a great deal of property. Then, in 1972, Idi Amin threw them all out and gave their property to black Ugandans. Chaos ensued. The new African entrepreneurs were totally inexperienced and the economy fell into ruin. Amin spent what little foreign exchange remained in the country on whiskey and transistor radios to placate the army, and soldiers and other government henchmen looted at will.*

Some dictators -even when they hold several degrees by Western Universities- either never seem to learn from the past or they are too attached to their privileges to think of anything else but their political fate. Zimbabwe´s Robert Mugabe presided over a long period of political and economic stability during which Zimbabwean economy was among the strongest three in the continent. On the other hand, most property, especially land resources, remained on the hands of white Zimbabweans, a small minority of the population. For political motives (i.e.: enlarging the number of supporters with an eye on his goal of staying in power), disguised as a way of correcting a social injustice, Mugabe´s government is devastating what once was a succesful developing country -albeit economically and socially very unequal-, when it is currently taking land and farms from their white owners by force. Mugabe´s replica of Idi Amin´s policies -as it was the case in Uganda- are not benefiting the general population either, as many properties have been distributed among political cronies and supporters. It all -combined with the international sanctions imposed on the country to force its government to walk towards democracy and the rule of law- is resulting in the highest inflation rate in the world, an astonishing level of unemployment, a massive process of emigration, record poverty levels and the disintegration of Zimbabwean economy. Finally, even if Mugabe´s intention of correcting past -and present- grievances were genuine -which are not-, the ‘way’ he chose to do it only adds new wrongs for blacks and whites alike without solving none of the previous problems. Only by setting up real democratic institutions, the rule of law and a free market may those huge difficulties be overcomed in the long term.

Read more about the current situation in Zimbabwe here.

(*) Helen Epstein, The Invisible Cure (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007, p. 10), citing the following sources: Yoweri Museveni, What Is Africa’s Problem? (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000); and Henry Kyemba, A State of Blood: The Inside Story of Idi Amin (Kampala: Fountain Publishers, 1997).

Photo: Mbarara, Uganda, 2006 © salarios

A moral dilemma

Russia is not a democracy. The Gulf Monarchies are not democracies, nor are many African countries. Human rights are respected in none of these countries or regions. On the other hand, we have commercial relations with them. We import oil, natural gas and all sorts of raw materials from them. We know in most cases the money we pay for those goods does not reach the population of those countries. It usually only fattens the Swiss bank accounts of the tyrants ruling them. Therefore, we are backing autocracies with our commercial policies. Put in another way, our commercial policies often undermine our foreign policy -provided it actively endorses human rights abroad-. It can be argued we should make our trade relations contingent upon progress in basic freedoms, human rights, the rule of law and democracy. In fact, that was the way we dealt with the apartheid in South Africa -along with diplomatic sanctions-. But, is it realistic to think the United States will cut oil imports from the Middle East or that Europe will stop buying natural gas from Russia or the corrupt Central Asian republics? Our economies depend increasingly on those resources. But even if they did not and we were able to devise some kind of embargo to help advance the cause of the high moral principles cited above, there will always be less scrupulous governments in need of those goods. Thus, if we do not buy Russian gas, China will; if we stop importing Saudi Arabia´s oil -and that is really science fiction now-, again, China will. Those are among the hurddles we encounter when we try to tackle security and human rights issues in the international realm. We only need to think of the difficulties to agree on economic sanctions as a way to stop Iran´s nuclear ambitions, or the increasing presence of Chinese firms -in many cases substituting Western ones- in Africa. When dealing with corrupt governments, the chinese will not raise the subject of human rights, to begin with because their civil society back home will not press them to do so (the chinese government does not permit the emergence of an independent civil society), as it is the case with Western companies and agencies, no matter how much we may criticize their behaviour. So, what is to be done? We certainly should not continue bowing down before dictators like Vladimir Putin or Teodoro Obiang while we happily buy their oil, but neither can we shut the door on their faces. If we want to advance the cause of human rights and democracy, that approach is bound to fail. I believe a solution to this moral dilemma ought to combine trade with diplomatic pressure and help directed to democratic elements in those societies, in particular the ones who could trigger political changes. I will try to further develop my viewpoint next week, when I return from an international seminar on the subject organized by the Foreign Office in London, UK. Let us hear what world experts on these matters have to say.

They all win

Two days ago, we had local and regional elections in Spain. The total number on votes was roughly equal for both main national parties, so both tried to appear in front of the public as winners. On the election day, contenders encouraged citizens to vote, pointing to the precious institution we enjoy in democracies and which people in non-democratic regimes long for. It is true that, in consolidated democracies, we take things for granted and do not value our liberal institutions as we should, but that is not the whole story. Most voters think their vote will not make much difference, or that things will remain the same no matter which party wins in the end. Casting a vote every four years is neither a democratic nor a much powerful tool to exert influence on political decisions. One possible solution would be to combine indirect elections with direct democracy institutions -referendum, legislative initiative, recall- which would empower citizens in everyday politics, force them to become more active and responsible and politicians to become more accountable. Above all, most decisions would remain in the hands of people who experience directly their consecuences, and not in the ones of a political caste which purports to know the desires of the citizens at any moment and which claims to have a mandate to do as it pleases with the political agenda.