Politics is the process by which groups make decisions. Although the term is generally applied to behavior within governments, politics is observed in all human (and many non-human) group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. In general, politics can be considered the art of navigating through tensions among multiple "I"s and the "we" to achieve collectively desired ends.
Politics - it is the authoritative allocation of values. Simply put, the power of someone or something to hand out things that are generally considered good. Harold Laswell defined it as a matter of benefit, who gets what, how and when.
A term which cannot be separated from politics is government. Government is that organization that hands out the things that are good. It is the structure that identifies who the beneficiaries are, what they get and how. A key element in government is legitimacy. To be legitimate, it has to be widely accepted that something is rightfully necessary or legally binding. Politics goes hand in hand with government.
Politics as Usual
ReplyDeleteIn today’s society with a plethora of ways of instant communication, politicians from both the left and right have taken full advantage of their ways to accomplish their goals. Politics has always been an ever evolving art form that plays on the minds of the country’s citizens. Facts are not an important variable in the equation of politics and that became clear during the 2008 presidential election. Since the majority of American citizens get their information from TV, newspapers, magazines and the internet, all a politician or a political party needs are talking points. These are short non-descriptive messages that are usually a generalization with little to no factual evidence involved. Politics are not hard to understand, it is the means in which to promote policy. However, for as long as our country has existed, a politic has been a way to manipulate citizens in order for them to think a certain way in terms of government.
Politics’ is an English plural noun, which can correctly be used with a singular or plural verb, though in the Noughties it has mostly been accompanied by a singular verb. It is the science or art (or manipulation) of government. It is the expression of political views, appropriate discussion of current affairs, the search after Truth through question and answer. In most developed countries political philosophy is a subject for study and examination at University level.
ReplyDeleteA ‘politician’ is a person taking part in politics, originally out of strong or even genuinely patriotic interest in the subject. The 20th century saw the phenomenon of persons involved in politics being paid a salary with expenses. This introduced motives of personal gain, either in wealth or power. From that moment on politicians ceased to be people interested in government alone. They were and are interested in what government (ie. politics) can bring them. It is an acknowledged fact that countries which pay their politicians well run less risk of corruption, and the opposite is, unfortunately true as well.
In all developed countries the politician is expected to hold curriculum vitae proving his/her completed education including university studies. In underdeveloped countries politicians may rise through the ranks to great power simply by being a devoted and/or radical member of his/her chosen political party. Military persons may gain political power by employing military force, later denying it to others.
Politics is not a product of democracy. It expresses the self-interests of the most powerful, and the rest either sign up to those interests or not: hence the evolution of the majority and minority in government, at whatever level (Prof. C Lee, 2009).
The Democratic Party was founded in the United States in 1828, and Andrew Jackson was the first Democrat president (1829 – 37). With 1960 as a start date, the Democrats favored social welfare, giving aid to underdeveloped countries, and civil rights.
The first Republican Party was founded in the US by Thomas Jefferson in 1792, in defense of agrarian interests, to oppose slavery and protect the rights of States, though the GOP (Grand Old Party) split into several factions later (1820s).
The Liberal Party in the United Kingdom was the political heir to the Whig reformers, who were the first to declare themselves ‘liberals’. The first Liberal government however was not formed until 1868, under William E. Gladstone.
In 1899 the Labor Representation Committee combined all the socialist groups, and the first British Labor Party had as its secretary the Scot Ramsay Macdonald.
Britain’s modern Conservative Party dates from Robert Peel’s ‘Tamworth Manifesto’ of 1834, though the term conservative was probably first used by George Canning ten years earlier. The term Tories is pejorative and comes from the Irish. The pejorative tone is used in modern Spain, where Socialistas are referred to as socioslistos or sociatas, which is why modern socialists prefer to be called progresistas.
Quotations:
Benjamin Disraeli 1804 – 1891
“A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy”
“England does not love coalitions”
“Finality is not the language of politics”
“Party is organized opinion”
“No Government can be long secure without a strong Opposition”
“The practice of politics in the East may be defined by one word – dissimulation”
The next time someone is directing
ReplyDeletenegativity at you, try this on:
“Even though I want to snap back
at this person to defend myself right now,
instead, I’ll stay quiet and still.
I’ll allow my vulnerability to be here
and see what happens!”
The politics of energy just got more complicated.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time a local electricity provider seeks relief from a proposed federal law that would force huge investments in a North Dakota power plant, the state of North Dakota is suing Minnesota over rules about supplying electricity in Minnesota.
North Dakota and some of the state’s major energy interests filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday seeking to overturn a 2007 Minnesota law that restricts power companies from importing electricity from new coal-fired power plants in other states.
The lawsuit, filed by that state’s attorney general, two coal companies, their trade association and three electric cooperatives, alleges that the Minnesota law violates the U.S. Constitution by unfairly restricting interstate commerce.
The lawsuit also asserts that Minnesota’s law is “purely a symbolic gesture that could only have a negligible impact toward actually achieving the purpose of reducing greenhouse gases on a global scale.”
North Dakota, which has deposits of lignite coal, wants to build at least three more coal-fired power plants and sell electricity in neighbor states. Those projects have been stymied by carbon-reduction requirements of the 2007 Next Generation Energy Act, the lawsuit says.
Meanwhile, environmental lawyer Beth Goodpaster told The Star Tribune that the lawsuit shows a misunderstanding of the law, which applies equally to Minnesota and out-of-state coal power plants. She said one of the coal power plants exempted from the law — and cited in the lawsuit — was built in North Dakota.
On Tuesday, the Koochiching County Board adopted a resolution asking the United States Environmental Protection Agency to accept a plan by North Dakota regarding power plant emissions. At issue is a haze rule in the federal Clean Air Act, which is intended to reduce haze in areas like national parks. The EPA has proposed to reject portions of the state’s plan to reduce nitrous oxide emissions and instead impose a federal plan that would require the lignite coal power plant in North Dakota that supplies power to members of the North Star Electric Cooperative to install additional technologies.
Critics say the EPA plan would not perceptibly reduce haze, the technology has not been proven to work in such plants and the plan will force an increase of electric rates by about 35 percent to local users. Instead, they say the North Dakota plan is environmentally sound.
The lawsuit, added to the potential impact of the haze rule on electrical rates and Minnesota’s resources, make it clear that supplying electricity is becoming a more complicated and political issue.
And the seriousness of that issue was best summed by Commissioner Mike Hanson: “Nothing is not impacted by the delivery of electrons. Our whole future depends on cheap energy.”
Read more: International Falls Journal - Politics of energy
Russia: On The March (Again)
ReplyDeleteOn the afternoon of September 9th, a massive power outage in the American Southwest blackened cities from California's San Diego and Orange counties to eastern Arizona and Mexico's border cities, including Tijuana. In spite of the fact that power was restored within twenty-four hours to most of the customers thrown-offline, the power cut caused the San Onofre nuclear plant to go offline, trains to be cancelled, the airport in San Diego, California to close down, massive traffic problems and delays due to non-functioning signal systems, and it shut down sewage stations, causing raw sewage to spill into a lagoon, a river and a portion of San Diego Bay. The blackout, just two days before the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack, attributed to an employee generated accident, understandably caused nerves to fray. More importantly it is yet again another wake-up call to the US general public, and for global power consumers for that matter, about just how vulnerable electrical transmission systems are and or to look at it another way just how dependent modern life is on uninterrupted power flow. It is not fear-mongering that prompts this reflection but a healthy dose of uncertainty as to whether the right policies are being pursued to provide strength and resilience to America’s power grid; if they are not then what are our options? While all the details of this blackout, the largest in Southern California history, will play out over the following weeks and months the JES will certainly follow with detailed analyses on what actually transpired.
World energy sensibilities were also raised by a few other incidents over the past weeks that are worth noting. The first was the inauguration on September 6th of the Nord Stream pipeline, ultimately a 55 billion cubic meter pipeline system that will send Russian gas directly to Germany. In doing so it will emasculate the winnowing political leverage Russia’s major gas transit state, Ukraine, has in negotiating with the Russian Federation over everything from the future ownership of Ukraine’s gas infrastructure to Russia’s naval presence in Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Nord Stream is undoubtedly a major political commercial victory for Russia attested to by the fact that Russia’s Prime Minister Putin attended the ceremony which he initially launched as President. What remains to be seen is whether this pipeline, and more like it such as Russia’s South Stream project, will add to or detract from European energy security. It is interesting to note that in the water realm, where trans-boundary water agreements have been concluded, this has lead to a formidable decrease in trans-border water related conflicts. These water agreements take their genus from the unwritten general rule that established democracies do not go to war with one another given the multiple sub-sets of linkages in trade, cooperation, and security that underscore democratic-to-democratic relationships. Can the same be said of trans-boundary pipeline projects such as Nord Stream? This certainly hasn’t been the case for Russia-Ukraine disputes arising from Ukraine’s transiting of Russian gas across its territory but then again Russia isn’t a democracy and Ukraine a fledgling one. Another development in German-Russian energy relations has been Gazprom’s play to take a major stake in Germany’s second largest utility RWE. RWE, having lost a reported 20% of its power generating capacity with Chancellor Merkel’s shut down of Germany’s nuclear power industry and a further loss of 30% in market value due to these developments, needs a cash infusion that Gazprom is more than willing to provide. According to a Reuter’s report, due to these developments RWE has seen its net profit plunge by some 40% over the first six months of 2011. Unless the Merkel decision is overturned by a German court, an unlikely event, Gazprom will more further integrate its vertical gas stream integration strategy into power generation in Europe’s largest industrial nation.
ReplyDeleteFinally, the European Commission doesn’t seem to be taking all of this on the chin. The Commission, having long failed to create a unified European external energy policy, announced at the beginning of September its desire to have member states share information on energy deals with foreign suppliers. Given RWE’s financial woes and Gazprom’s desire to cement this RWE-Gazprom deal into legal stone the pressure is on to conclude the contract in the event the Commission is successful in its efforts. Reluctance on the part of EU members is high if only because they would cede even more power to Brussels’s policy makers that already drive approximately 80% of legislation [law] across all EU-27 nations through a complicated process that seems to escape the knowledge of EU citizens themselves. Energy policy has also long been the prevue of national governments and oil and gas companies reluctant to submit what they consider confidential information to the non-elected in Brussels for their take on what they consider commercial decisions. These events including many more around the world in the energy and security domains demonstrate the increasing dynamism of energy as a security issue and the complexity of decisions which must be taken to protect citizens, regardless of local, access to power and commodities that ensure their present and future security. The nagging question to be asked is while ‘energy’ is a product that is generated, bought, and sold how ‘energy security’ can be bolstered as a public good not unlike national defense, the integrity of electrical power systems, or from the systematic transfer of industries critical for national security to foreign powers.
ReplyDelete.
America Falling Behind: The Strategic Dimensions of Chinese Commercial Nuclear Energy
ReplyDeleteThe United States has long prided itself on its strong culture of innovation and technological advancement. However in the field of nuclear energy it is losing, if it has not already lost its leadership position. Contributor Scott Cullinane points out that, "today 40% of the enriched uranium US power plants use is processed overseas and imported" from elsewhere. At the same time China is adding to its nuclear fleet, pioneering the new stage of nuclear technological development through its national strategy of 'indigenous innovation' with the resulting ability to export cutting edge nuclear technologies to the highest bidder. The strategic implications of these developments on US national security and foreign policy are immense.
.The Empire Strikes Back: European Energy and the Return of Gazprom
Gazprom, like its Russian state owners, has pursued an effective, long term strategy of ingratiating and integrating its interests with those of its downstream customers. It may have struck a coup though in moving closer to RWE Germany's second largest electricity producer. The field of maneuver for a Gazprom ownership stake in RWE has been made perceptively easier with the Merkel government's decision to discontinue nuclear power as an entire class of power generating technology available to German industrial and residential consumers. As a partial result of this decision, RWE has lost a reported 20% of its market value and is eager for the new investment that Gazprom can provide. Vertically integrating Gazprom as a key player in Europe's largest industrial economy is really what is at stake in the short term. Integrating Russian influence as a base-load factor in Germany's future is of longer term concern.
.The Geoeconomic and Geopolitical Implications of Unconventional Gas in Europe
ReplyDeleteThe unconventional gas revolution has had its biggest impact on US gas markets but it would be erroneous to think the cascading impacts of this technology-lead sea-change in gas stop at America's shores. Unconventional gas, shale gas, has helped create a global gas glut and in doing so is depriving Russia of the leverage it exacts from European governments dependent on its natural gas. The idea of replacing an imported good with a domestic one may sound simplistic, but the overall political and economic implications of this new resource are global in scope.
.Post Mortem on Germany's Nuclear Melt-Down
Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel's Spring assault on the country's nuclear power industry, if enacted, will reverberate through the German economy and society for decades to come. 'Germans for Germany' seems an apt phrase to describe such precipitous action with little thought given to the decision's impact on European energy security, German energy security, and on German foreign policy. In fact, Merkel's plan to provide 'flexible power' alternatives to integrate non-existent wind and solar power into the German grid limits the country's options for safe and reliable base load electricity to either coal or natural gas and we know where Germany's gas comes from.
.China and Recent Military Showdowns in the South China Sea
China's global thirst for energy resources to feed its economic expansion and increasingly prosperous citizenry is beginning to impinge on areas of geographic, and resource interest, to its Asian neighbors. The South China Sea is one area of contention that has caused a flare-up in relations between China, Vietnam, and the Philippines in recent months. Hooman Peimani at the prestigious National University of Singapore explores the roots of these regional disagreements and helps explain Chinese growing assertiveness in its foreign policy behavior and how we may be seeing more muscle flexing particularly where it believes it has a distinct upper-hand.
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Sudan is at the crossroads of history. In theory, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed in 2005 was expected to resolve the question of managing diversity, provide new formulae for equitable sharing of wealth, identify rules for a new national-security paradigm and align core interests of the various Sudanese communities. In reality, though, the last few years of the interim period have undermined confidence between the North and the South. Critical deadlines outlined in the CPA have not been met. Issues such as the border demarcation between North and South, demarcation of the Abyei borders, settling dispute over the census results, and enactment of laws pertaining to democratic transformation, among other things, are yet to be concluded. Furthermore, there has been sluggish progress in most aspects of power and wealth sharing. In effect, the CPA has evolved into a tool of containment and accommodation, thereby undershooting its target of radical change. In its present form, it represents an exit strategy or “divorce mechanism” for the parties, whose entrenched perspectives for achieving or maintaining unity have proven divergent and unacceptably costly. In this fast-evolving environment, the partition of the country is quickly gaining primacy over its unity.
ReplyDeleteNorthern political elites are split in their vision of the Sudan. For instance, proponents of the Old Sudan are reluctant to embrace any radical change as the policies they always put forward are shaped by establishment interests, only purveying a generalized desire to create a new dispensation. Within the same stream of thought, others emphasize the dominance of the center even at the expense of the union. One such extreme view is that of Abdel-Rahim Hamdi, who served as Sudan’s minister of finance in the 1990s. In 2006, he presented a controversial proposal to the NCP conference that became known as “Hamdi Triangle Dialectics.” The key moral of his thesis was that the Islamists should begin to turn inward and focus on an Arab-Islamic constituency of the “Riverine North.” According to him, this is critical for winning the upcoming general elections or managing its destiny alone in the event of a breakup of the country.2 Therefore, a peaceful division of Sudan could either be a natural consequence of the southern referendum or a result of the Arab-Islamic North’s own choice to secede from the rest of the country. This proposition is understandably relevant, as most of the radical northern coterie (Islamists and Pan-Arabists) equate the New Sudan Project with “African hegemony.” On the other hand, adherents of the New Sudan doctrine disagree with such a unionist paradigm, premised on the exploitative polity that perpetuates the dominance of the center on the peripheries. While in full support of the broad-based struggle against injustice, they also contend that there is no political utility to a call for self-determination that could lead to secession by any part of the country.
Southerners are also split between proponents of “voluntary unity” (sometimes defined as attractive unity) and secession, with the latter gaining more popular credence.3 The drift towards secession in the South is justified on grounds of the non-sustainability of the “Northern Hegemony Calculus” and the apparent weak appeal of the “Vision of New Sudan” to attain its objectives before the end of the interim period. As a natural consequence, to many in the South secession represents the only optimal solution that may prevent conflict and difuse tensions at the end of the interim period. Regardless of these discourses, Sudan’s destiny rests on a resolution of these volatile crosscurrents. Its survival or demise will depend on the outcome of a self-determination vote in the South on unity and secession options in 2011.
ReplyDeletePartition of the Sudan is a possible outcome regardless of the anxiety that it raises. Though the parties to the CPA are understandably reluctant to predict that the southern referendum would lead to secession, providing discreet assessments about post-referendum dispensations is highly timely. This analysis illuminates the complexity and changing dynamics of energy politics in the Sudan and the need to develop a nuanced understanding of its external dimension. Although, historically, there have been several layers to the North-South dispute, this paper focuses on energy politics subsequent to the South’s opt-out.
SOVEREIGN STATUSEnergy experts reckon that Sudan’s untapped oil resources are sizable and that the volume of proven reserves would increase with the expansion of exploration activities. According to Oil and Gas Journal, Sudan’s proven reserves were estimated at five billion barrels as of January 2007, with the bulk of these reserves located in southern Sudan. Prospecting for hydrocarbons has intensified in the North itself, and seismic surveys have so far shown promising results in a number of northern states.4
The development of Sudan’s oil sector has not followed a smooth path; it was hampered by the adverse political events plaguing the country during the 1970s and 1980s. Occupation of the oilfields and the exploitation of oil were critical to the government’s quest for a new source of revenue. For the South, oil exploitation was considered an act of plunder that needed to be obstructed by all means necessary, including military attacks.5 By summer 1985, all the oil investments in the South as well as the digging of the Jonglei Canal6 had hit a cul-de-sac. Therefore, exploration activities were restricted to a limited operational scope, mainly in the Heglig area. Most oilfields were kept inaccessible throughout the civil war.
Politics Tests Energy Goals .
ReplyDeleteWASHINGTON -- Steven Chu, President-elect Barack Obama's pick to lead the Energy Department, got a taste last week of what life in Washington would be like.
Members of the Illinois congressional delegation met with the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Jan. 7 and pressured him to support renewed federal aid for a project in Mattoon, Ill., to build a virtually emissions-free, coal-fired power plant. The Bush administration cancelled funding for the project last year after budget overruns.
Mr. Obama is building a significant part of his economic-recovery plan on a bet that the U.S. can dramatically change the way it powers its economy. And Mr. Chu has called the expansion of conventional, coal-fired generating plants his worst nightmare, adding that he isn't sure that the technology in the Illinois project represents a solution to coal's impact on the environment.
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Steven Chu
.But in last week's meeting he was noncommittal, assuring the delegation from his future boss's home state that he understood the importance of clean-coal research. "He kind of laughed and said one of the real challenges of this job is getting used to the people he's going to be working with in the government and the halls of Congress," said Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin.
It's one example of the issues Mr. Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California, will face in seeking to reconcile the new administration's lofty promises with policy on the ground.
He is scheduled to be in Washington Tuesday for a Senate hearing likely to focus on his scientific credentials and his warnings about the consequences of climate change. After Mr. Chu's expected confirmation, he will confront the challenge of using the relatively narrow formal scope of his agency's mission and budget as a platform for changing the way Americans think about energy. Mr. Chu lamented in a speech in Washington last year that many Americans "would rather have a granite countertop" than spend extra on energy efficiency.
For all the enthusiasm that Mr. Chu's nomination has generated among environmentalists and scientists, the Energy Department has little formal power to affect the nation's energy choices. Most of the department's budget goes toward managing nuclear weapons and cleaning up former weapons labs. Its budget for research and development has plummeted since its peak of $6 billion in the Carter administration to $1.4 billion last year, according to a recent report by the Energy Security Leadership Council, a Washington-based group.
ReplyDeleteSome of that money is tied up on projects that critics say are technically or economically unfeasible, but that the agency is obligated to pay for because they have been added to legislation by members of Congress. An analysis last year by the American Association for the Advancement of Science referred to the Energy Department as one of the most heavily earmarked domestic U.S. research-and-development agencies.
The son of Chinese immigrants and a co-winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics for helping develop ways to trap atoms by herding and subduing them with laser beams, Mr. Chu has warned that climate change will have dire economic and social consequences. As director of the Lawrence Berkeley lab, he focused on developing advanced biofuels and energy-efficient technologies. He helped shepherd the creation of a new energy biosciences institute, funded by oil giant BP PLC, despite skepticism from some at the university who were wary of its corporate funding.
Mr. Chu declined through a spokeswoman last week to be interviewed.
As energy secretary, Mr. Chu would play a key role in helping Mr. Obama execute his ambitious goals of doubling over three years the amount of U.S. wind, solar and geothermal generating capacity, currently around 25,000 megawatts. Mr. Obama's aides say his administration would do that partly through loan guarantees like those the Energy Department already administers.
Skeptics, such as Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Rex Tillerson, say there isn't enough manufacturing capacity to produce the many wind turbines needed to make Mr. Obama's vision a reality.
Mr. Obama also has pledged to raise $150 billion over the next 10 years for various clean-energy technologies and alternative fuels, with revenue generated by an emissions-trading system that would cap industries' greenhouse-gas emissions and force companies to pay to pollute. But legislation creating such a system isn't expected to pass Congress this year, and pressure is growing on Washington to figure out faster ways to pay for such projects.