a curious Yankee in Europe's court

When it comes to issues near and dear to feminists (and non-feminists), Iceland is the country to watch these days. Last year, Icelanders elected the first lesbian head of state, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir. Now, the country’s elected representatives have passed a law to close down all Iceland’s strip clubs (“Iceland: the world’s most feminist country” by Julie Bindel, Guardian, Mar 25, 2010).

Excerpt:

Even more impressive: the Nordic state is the first country in the world to ban stripping and lapdancing for feminist, rather than religious, reasons. Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir, the politician who first proposed the ban, firmly told the national press on Wednesday: “It is not acceptable that women or people in general are a product to be sold.”

I never give my dogs commercial pet food, but this ad is an irresistible winner.

A troublesome question keeps cropping up related to democracies, old and new. It’s one that, it seems to me, could turn out to be the Achilles’ heel of this much lauded system of government. And that question is — how do you persuade most (if not all) of the voters to come out and vote when it’s time to do so?

It may or may not surprise you to learn that the highest average percentage of voter turnout globally during the past several decades has been 68% (see here). More recently, though, even that not very impressive statistic has been shrinking, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA):

Overall participation in competitive elections across the globe rose steadily between 1945 and 1990. Between 1945-1950 the number of voters turning out to vote at each election represented 61% of the voting age population (i.e. all citizens old enough to vote). That turnout figure rose to 62% in the 1950s, 65% in the 1960s, 67% in the 1970s, and 68% in the 1980s. But in the 1990s, with the influx of a host of competitive elections in newly democratising states, the average for elections held since 1990 has dipped back to 64%.

In the 2008 Presidential election in the U.S., for example, voter turnout was 64 percent. Turn that on its head and that means that 36 percent of eligible voters — 73 million people — did not bother to go vote. And they made this choice to not participate in the democratic process during a time of great crisis not only for their own country but for the entire world, and in an election that was an amazing historic moment for the country itself.

Interesting, don’t you think?

As many do, I find this trend of low voter turnout generally across the globe to be alarming. But I also think we need to confront it in an intelligent way. For me that means posing a direct question to the citizens of those many countries who choose not to vote — do you really want to have a democratic form of government? Seriously ask this question.

I’m not so naive as to think that high voter turnout is the solution to the world’s problems. An ignorant voter is more often a friend only to the worst of those seeking elective office. To march into the future, simply muttering to our dog or cat about public apathy on election days, while suffering under ever lamer, ever more corrupt governments, however, is not very smart either.

What brought this all to mind is the video below of an interesting interview today on France 24 exploring why 53 percent of the French didn’t vote in last week’s regional elections there.

A super, easy to use, rollover graphic with pop-up traffic numbers for the top 100 websites has been posted by the BBC. Data is from Nielsen (Jan 2010) and includes the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Brazil, United States and Australia.

Continuing in my effort to learn to speak Wall Street, I came across a video of a talk in late January by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz. The economist was a guest speaker at the Commonwealth Club of California. The occasion was the recent publication of his new book — “Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy” (Jan 2010).

Stiglitz was one of the few who early predicted the fall of Wall Street. In this recent talk, he mentions that he had hoped the silver lining of the 2008 financial crisis would be a push for new finance regulations, but that this hasn’t happened.

Excerpt:

In 1996 we reformed welfare for the poor, and when we reformed welfare for the poor we said, if you’re going to get welfare payments from the government you have to either look for a job or go into a training program to increase your skills. But when we put the banks on welfare — and we ought to be clear — it was a bigger welfare program than the total amount we will spend on the poor over a century… the welfare payment for the banks is larger than what we will be spending on poor people literally over a century.

So this is a huge amount. But when we did that, we didn’t put any conditions, and we should have. You know, the banks said, well, trust us. The point is, look at how they behaved before that. We had every reason not to trust them…

Today is the anniversary of the birth of Antonio Vivaldi – March 4, 1678. He was born in Venice. Vivaldi is especially famous for his concertos. One of the most well-known is “The Four Seasons.” Another of his best-known works is “Gloria.”

In this video, cellist Yo-Yo Ma is performing selected segments from both these works.

Jane McGonigal (PhD, UC, Berkeley) believes that we can best change what’s broken in the world by playing games.

In a Q&A interview with WIRED last month, McGonigal explains her thinking. She also talks about her new game EVOKE — launched yesterday — that puts her saving-the-world premise into action (“TED 2010: Reality Is Broken. Game Designers Must Fix It” Feb 11, 2010).

Video of how-to play the game, below. McGonigal’s personal website is here.

From Putumayo World Music, a video spotlight on musician Kiran Ahluwalia. She was born in India, grew up in Canada and now lives in New York City. With the streets of India as background, Ahluwalia talks about her music.

In an interview last week with France24, Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi said she does not share the view that the resistance in Iran is growing weak (Feb 23, 2010).

The Iranian lawyer said that the protest movement is “as strong as ever” but is now varying in its forms. The interviewer asked Ebadi what could cause the present regime to yield to the resistance. Ebadi responded:

What exasperates this regime really is that the demonstrations are continuing and they are continuing to be extremely peaceful in the protests, and they are not giving the state any excuses to justify its violence.

Moreover, amongst the religious authorities there are very strong disagreements. A great number of the clerics have taken a position in favor of the people and are protesting against the government, and have condemned the violence of government saying that this could lead to the fall of the regime which would be harmful to all the authorities including the clergy, and they are taking a stand against violence. This disagreement among the clergy is very important.

Where are the good guys when it comes to financial reform? Nowhere in sight according to this Yahoo! Finance video interview yesterday with Martin Wolf, chief economist for the Financial Times (“Goldman-Greek Deal “Completely Scandalous” … and Legal” Mar 2, 2010).

Referring to the world’s political leaders’ promises of financial reform, Wolf says it now looks like there isn’t going to be reform of any significance:

I find that after a crisis of this scale that’s simply terrifying, simply terrifying.