“The price of freedom is eternal vigilence.”
This interview with Murat Kurnaz published by Amnesty International gives an idea of the quality of the selection process used to bring people in to detention at Guantanamo. It also describes torture methods being used by the US.
Read it here: Five Years of My Life
I am very concerned about the way in which the last few presidential elections appear to have come down to just a couple key states to determine the outcome of the election. It makes me feel like the interests of those few states take on a much more important role than other states in determining what kind of platform presidential candidates have to adopt and who will ultimately be elected. I think presidents should be concerned with the interests of the entire nation as a whole, not just a few states. I’ve read about the possibility of changing the constitution to use direct elections with instant runoff voting, and it sounds like a good idea to me. I know this is an old issue that has been debated for hundreds of years, but I think it’s significantly different now than it was before. It seems like people running political campaigns now have access to much more accurate and detailed information from polls than they ever had before, and with computers and so forth I’m thinking that they are now able to predict with a much higher degree of accuracy what impact various possible moves in the campaign might have on the outcomes in certain key states. The current system greatly magnifies the importance of a small number of swing voters in a small number of swing states, and the outcome is muddied even more by the problem of spoiler candidates like Ralph Nader. With direct elections using IRV, the campaigns would need to engage the much larger body of swing voters across the entire nation. The campaign advisers could still try to find wedge issues in certain states, but the return on investment for that would be much smaller since it wouldn’t potentially cause the entire state to switch sides.
Following is a letter I just sent to my local representative in Congress on global warming. I’m also sending it to our senators.
Dear Rep. Tauscher,
Thank you for everything you are doing to represent us in Congress. I am very concerned about global warming and I think it’s time for Congress to take decisive action on this issue. We need to create a huge new economy based on optimizing efficiency and minimizing environmental impact. Once the government passes strong legislation mandating massive reductions in carbon emissions, I think we will all be amazed at the ingenuity of the American people to find solutions and come up with entirely new ways of meeting our needs. Please support this kind of legislation in Congress, and don’t settle for small steps on this issue.
Thank you,
Geoffrey Gowan