The crisis of democracy and referenda
> On 11/01/06, Prem Chandavarkar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > A referendum helps to resolve impasses reached when you have polarised > > opinions on critical single cause issues. It cannot be a substitute for > > the day to day negotiations of representative politics. > > True. On the other hand, elected representatives may well be less > likely to pass unpopular laws, and more likely to take the views of > the majority into account when carrying on those day-to-day > negotiations, if they know that citizens can easily arrange a > referendum on any issue in order to reverse their decisions. The > existence of an easy referendum mechanism, even if it is rarely used, > may thus make politicians more sensitive to public opinion. In Switzerland, the place that has the most extensive experience with referenda, this is exactly what happens. Politically speaking, the most important thing about a referendum is not calling one, but to be able to credibly claim that one can does so. This buys you the ticket to the negotiation table. Before any law passes, there are extensive rounds of negotiations (called "Vernehmlassung" in Swiss-German), where all the groups that can call a referendum are asked to provide feedback to the proposed law, making sure that all the powerful groups in the country agree on a law, or can at least live with it. Nobody wants to work for years on a law, and then have it subjected to to vagueries of a public vote (which is always unpredictable, since one never knows about the context in which the vote is actually held). In practice, this slows down everything, and give a lot of influence to unelected presentative of powerful groups, why may, depending on the issue, include unions and environmental groups. As an effect, the power of elected politicians is serverely curtailed, after all, the representative aspects are only one part of this particular Swiss brand of democracy. Because the mechanisms of Swiss democracy are rather different from others, the crisis that it faces is also very different. Yes, of course, there's also a lot of lobbying, but given the curtailed power of politicians, buying them off only gets you so far. The actual crisis is two fold: first, given the need to consult and include ever diverging interest, the system slows down to a crawl, as, in the end, it's always safer to do nothing than to risk losing face in a refendum. Second, more and more stuff gets decided on an international basis, with the national parliaments only responsible for converting international treaties (or EU directives) into national law. Yet, the fiction that direct democracy is the ultimate source of power, needs to be maintained, as it's so crucial to Swiss identity. So how do you square this? By inventing a construction called "autonomer Nachvollzug" which can be translated as "autonomous conformation". If that sounds like a paradox, it is. The key idea is that Switzerland is autonomous to conform to international agreements. In fact, of course, it is not, but given its deep interlikages with the EU and other countries, it simply has to take over what is decided there. +---+-+--- http://felix.openflows.org # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
FW: update on Steve Kurtz case
Federal judge gives the go-ahead to Kurtz case Motion to dismiss charges "premature' By DAN HERBECK News Staff Reporter 1/13/2006 http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20060113/1041787.asp <http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20060113/1041787.asp> Prosecution of Steven Kurtz has caused artists' outcry. A criminal case that has upset many people in the art world will continue to move forward in federal court here. In an opinion issued late Thursday, U.S. Magistrate Judge H. Kenneth Schroeder Jr. refused to recommend dismissal of charges against Steven J. Kurtz, a University at Buffalo art professor who was indicted by a federal grand jury in June 2004. Kurtz, 47, is a founding member of the Critical Arts Ensemble, a group whose art exhibits often criticize the federal government. His indictment touched off debate about artistic freedom and the government's efforts to tightly control the distribution of bacterial agents in the post-9/11 era. It would be "premature" to dismiss the charges, Schroeder wrote. The judge also refused to recommend the suppression of evidence taken from Kurtz's Allentown home after his wife died there in May 2004. "Even if it assumed . . . that the government will fall short in the required proof, a motion to dismiss the indictment must be considered as being premature and inappropriate in addressing that issue," Schroeder wrote. The judge said he will schedule a hearing to determine whether some statements Kurtz made to Buffalo police should be suppressed. Kurtz and Robert E. Ferrell, a human genetics researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, are charged with illegally obtaining bacterial agents from a laboratory in Virginia. They are charged with felony mail fraud and wire fraud. Kurtz's attorney, Paul J. Cambria Jr., had argued that no actual crime was committed. He said Kurtz obtained "harmless" forms of bacteria that he planned to use "in an art exhibit, to make a political point." "We plan to appeal this ruling," Cambria said Thursday. "Judge Schroeder didn't say we were wrong. He said we would have to wait until trial to make that [dismissal] motion." Kurtz had no immediate comment. Edmund J. Cardoni Jr., a friend and supporter, said he is certain the ruling will cause "shock and anger" in the art world. "I'm still baffled as to why the federal government is using its resources to pursue this case," said Cardoni, executive director of Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo. "In my opinion, Steve is being specifically targeted because he is a dissenting voice." Many artists in this country and Europe have protested the indictments, holding demonstrations in Buffalo and other cities. Some have accused federal agents of unfairly targeting Kurtz because they consider him a subversive. The government denies those allegations Artists have raised more than $200,000 for Kurtz's defense fund. Schroeder's ruling is only considered an opinion at this point, and Cambria plans to ask a U.S. district judge, John T. Elfvin, for a ruling on the indictment and the evidence. Assistant U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul Jr. said he is "gratified that the judge reached the conclusion that the police searches were valid and the indictment was proper." While authorities never accused the two men of having any intent to commit terrorist acts, their case resulted from an investigation by the Joint Terrorism Task Force of Western New York, led by the FBI. The case had its start on May 12, 2004, when Buffalo police were called to Kurtz's home after the death of his wife, Hope Kurtz. Police said they called federal agents because they were suspicious about the death and because they found an "apparent biological laboratory." The home was temporarily sealed off by FBI agents wearing biohazard suits. According to court papers, Kurtz told Buffalo police he had a "biodispersion device" that "could be used to disperse bacteria" in the home. Cambria is seeking to suppress that statement and others, which would make them inadmissible as trial evidence. Last January, Cambria filed court papers asking for dismissal of the charges. He said federal agents took a harmless series of events and remarks and tried to portray Kurtz and Ferrell as "bioterrorists." But Hochul said Thursday that the men are accused simply of fraud and not of any terrorism-related crime. He said Ferrell, who contended that the bacteria was for use in his own university's laboratory, purchased it under "false pretenses" for Kurtz. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: Frank Rieger: We lost the War--Welcome to the World
Jack Jansen wrote: > On 8-jan-2006, at 2:12, Karin Spaink wrote: >>What else can we - I, you, us - do? I dunno. Nobody believes in armed >>revolution, so that's off, fortunately. What's left sounds rather >>lame. Propose alternatives. Keep addressing people. Show them the >>fallibility of the main-stream argument. Show them the risks _for >>them_ of what is going on. We have either not been very apt at that >>or we have underestimated the opposition. That, or people are not as >>smart as we thought. > > IMHO this hits the nail on the head: it seems that it has become =20 > pretty much impossible to get a sizeable fraction of the population =20 > to react to what is happening to the world. A sizeable fraction of =20 > the people directly hit: maybe. But the rest of the people at best =20 > feel bad for the victims and get on with their life. Most people here =20 > in Holland will sort-of sympathise with the inhabitants of Limburg =20 > who're trying the do something against the AWACS planes soaring over =20 > their heads day-in-day-out, but no more than sympathise. Most people =20 > will sort-of feel bad for the 100,000 families who'll most probably =20 > be out of health insurance in 3 months time. Most people will sort-of =20 > think it's unfair that Moroccans are asked for their ID time and =20 > again. But that's where it stops: nobody except some fringe groups =20 > actually speak up or take action, and this is something that has =20 > changed in the last two decades or so. Actually, I have to disagree. The flaw in your logic is that the list of affected people keeps growing, and is already far, far longer than you even attempted to make it. the very nature of the structure of capitalism is such that a tiny handful of rich, white guys are reaping the benefits of the suffering of the whole world. 8 billion to 8. While it's planes in Holland and Id checks for Moroccans, its also shootings of Mexican migrants at the US Mexico border, the loss of livelihoods of both indigenous farmers in chiapas and small business owners put out of business by wal-mart in arkansas. I would propose that we're just starting to really see the effects of corporate globalization and late capitalism. All the things people said NAFTA would do, it has done. Take the land from 1.5 million mexican farmers and what do we have? Massive migration and militarized borders. Turn all of Mexico and the rest of the global south into a Maquila and what do we need? Huge box stores to sell all those goods. I hate to be a historical materialist, but its only a matter of time. Even the little old hardware store owner from middle America in the Wal-Mart film "The High Cost of Low Prices" thinks that we're on the verge of a revolution in just a few years. The task of community organizers and those interested in decentralizing power is to start creating the structures we want to see. Start learning how to live in a post-capitalist, post-competitive, post-artificial scarcity, post-domation environment, learning how to create the systems to enable and sustain the dynamics we want. We're still so early in our political evolution. Representative democracy is one tiny baby step away from Monarchy. What's next? This is a big part of the question the Zapatistas, the Piqueteros, the squatters and so many people around the world are trying to answer. > What makes things worse, actually much worse, is that the news media =20 > have adapted to this, and hard news is losing out to human interest. =20 > This creates a feedback loop, because the audience will of course =20 > also sympathise with the victims of some random family tragedy. So as =20 > the balance in coverage moves away from hard news the focus of the =20 > audience's attention will shift too, which will cause the media to =20 > move the balance further. And while everyone is discussing what to do =20 > about fathers killing their children (which happens occasionally, has =20 > always happened occasionally, and probably always will happen =20 > occasionally whatever you try to do against it) the-powers-that-be =20 > continue with their often infinitely more dangerous activities in =20 > relative obscurity...=20 Fortunately, while some of the technology we've cerated has enabled ubitquitous surveillance, some of the other technology has created more mass production of media. The blogosphere, podcasting, net radio, video blogging, all of these things are the realization of a serious shift beyonf simple media consumption, and while they're still a relatively tiny phenomena, they're changing the landscape. Some questions for me are, how long before it becomes co-opted and controlled? How do we make it more widespread? Is it possible? After a talk by =C5=BDeljko Bla=C4=87e yesterday, Natalie Jeremijenko asked if he thought that the utopian idea that simply observing something could create a relationship to it was starting to go away and if people were starting to think of ways to enable more ac
