De la tara (I)

Pentru ca d'acolo m-am intors, pentru ca am niste povesti in episodul urmator, pentru ca astazi m-am uitat la televizor vreo ora si ceva.

Politics and political figures aside, am vazut vreo juma de ora discutii si imagini cu accidente rutiere in care diversi oameni cretini (been there) sau de-a dreptul nebuni distrug vieti si proprietati si mi-am adus aminte o intrebare mai veche - "de ce sunt romanii atat de indulgenti cu semenii lor care incalca regulile?". De unde aceasta pornire anarhica?

La televizor i-am vazut numiti teribilisti, ie purtati de pornirea de impresiona/obtine atentie sau doritori de adrenalina. Altii sunt alcoolici pentru ca asa au invatat acasa sau pentru ca sunt deprimati. Nici o vorba de responsabilitate sau intentie, desi vorbim despre adulti care si-au luat permis si masina mai sportiva asumandu-si riscul de a conduce imprudent sau pe valul unei emotii oarecare.

Vad deresponsabilizarea asta in fiecare zi, in egala masura cu responsabilizarea absurda si la gramada a unor persoane, colectivitati sau organizatii care par sa fie de vina pentru toate relele din tara asta. Pe a doua o inteleg, e usor si confortabil, si inteleg si fuga de responsabilitate individuala a propriei persoane. Nu inteleg insa indulgenta fata de ceilalti care gresesc, MAI ALES in conditiile unei societati in care normele sunt foarte rar respectate si aplicate. Bottom-line, de ce l-as scuza eu pe ala care imi fura portofelul, si, prin implicatie, de ce l-as scuza pe ala care fura portofelul altuia, mai ales atunci cand nu ma pot identifica direct cu hotul (adica nu-mi imaginez ca as putea face asta vreodata). N-am nici o idee de raspuns simplu.

Tot la tv l-am vazut in sfarsit pe S.M. Ionita spunand ceva simplu si frumos, care suna ceva de genul ---- institutiile nu pot exista fara reguli. Daca regula nu este aplicata consistent si coerent nu exista incredere in institutii. Daca nu exista incredere in institutii exista doar clanuri, loialitati, spaga si eventual arbitrariul violentei.

Resolving to Resist

Sa zicem ca e despre importanta unei Constitutii care sa protejeze cetatenii de abuzurile puterilor in stat, in special de cele ale puterii executive - un principiu constitutional fundamental si mult mai democratic decat cele enuntate de autorii propunerii prezidentiale de modificare, de exemplu "absenta conflictului intre puteri" sau "demnitatea umana"...

**I'm bad for quoting whole passages but it's worth it**

Rule of law, misrule of men
Elaine Scarry
A Boston Review Book
the mit press
Copyright © 2010 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

When, shortly after September 11, the U.S.A. Patriot Act first arrived in our midst, its very title seemed to deliver an injury: “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.” The names of the country (U.S.A.) and of those responsible for creating and sustaining it (patriots) had been turned into a Justice Department acronym. One might have thought that “United States of America” would be regarded as a sufficient referent for the letters U.S.A. and that no one would presume to bestow a new set of words on those letters—or attach a new meaning to the word patriot, with its heavy freight of history (Paul Revere, Patrick Henry, Emma Lazarus) and its always fresh aspiration (“O beautiful for patriot dream”).

In the two years since its passage by Congress, on October 25, 2001, the U.S.A. Patriot Act has become the locus of resistance against the unceasing injuries of the Bush-Rumsfeld-Ashcroft triumvirate, as first one community, then two, then eleven, then 27, then 238 passed resolutions against it, as have three state legislatures. Many more councils and legislatures have draft resolutions pending. The letters “U.S.A.” and the word “patriot” have gradually reacquired their earlier solidity and sufficiency, as local and state governments reanimate the practice of self-rule by opposing the Patriot Act’s assault on the personal privacy, free flow of information, and freedom of association that lie at the heart of democracy.
Each of the resolutions affirms a town’s obligation to uphold the Constitutional rights of all persons who live there, and many of the resolutions explicitly direct police and other residents to refrain from carrying out the provisions of the Patriot Act, even when approached by a federal officer and explicitly instructed to do so.

When the resistance was beginning in the winter of 2001–2002, it took five months for the first five resolutions to come into being; in the winter of 2003–2004, a new resolution comes into being almost every day. The resolutions come from towns ranging from small villages with populations under a thousand—such as Wendell, Massachusetts (986), Riverside, Washington (348), Gaston, Oregon (620), and tiny Crestone, Colorado (73)—to huge cities with populations of many hundreds of thousands—Philadelphia (1,517,550), Baltimore (651,000), Chicago (2,896,000), Detroit (951,000), Austin (656,500), San Francisco (777,000).2 Approximately one third of the resolutions come from towns and cities with populations between 20,000 and 200,000 people.

That the Patriot Act should became this locus of resistance may at first seem puzzling. True, its legislative history is sordid: it was rushed through Congress in several days; no hearings were held; it went largely unread; only a few of its many egregious provisions were modified. But at least it was passed by Congress; many other blows have been delivered to the people of the United States in the form of unmodified executive edicts, such as the formation of military tribunals and the nullification of attorney-client privilege.

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A Structural Injury

If many members of Congress failed to read the Patriot Act during its swift passage, it is in part because the law is almost unreadable. The Patriot Act is written as an extended sequence of additions to and deletions from previously existing statutes. In making these alterations, it often instructs the bewildered reader to insert three words into paragraph X of statute Y without ever providing the full sentence that is altered, either in its original or its amended form.

Only someone who had scores of earlier statutes open to the relevant pages could step painstakingly through the revisions. On the issue of electronic surveillance alone, the Patriot Act modifies the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Cable Act, the Federal Wiretap Statutes, and the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.

Reading the Patriot Act is like being forced to spend the night on the steps outside the public library, trying to infer the sentences in the books inside by listening to hundreds of mice chewing away on the pages.

The hundreds of additions and deletions do, despite appearances, have a coherent and unitary direction: many of them increase the power of the Justice Department and decrease the rights of individual persons. The Constitutional rights abridged by the Patriot Act are enumerated in the town resolutions, which most often specify violations of the First Amendment guarantee of free speech and assembly, the Fourth Amendment guarantee against search and seizure, the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment guarantees of due process, and (cited somewhat less often) the Sixth and Eighth Amendment guarantees of a speedy and public trial and protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

The unifying work of the Patriot Act is even clearer if, rather than summarizing it as an increase in the power of the Justice Department and a corresponding decrease in the rights of persons, it is understood concretely as making the population visible and the Justice Department invisible.

The Patriot Act inverts the Constitutional requirement that people’s lives be private and the work of government officials be public; it instead crafts a set of conditions in which our inner lives become transparent, and the workings of the government become opaque. Either one of these outcomes would imperil democracy; together they not only injure the country but also cut off the avenues of repair.
When we say that democracy requires that the people’s privacy be ensured, we do not mean that our lives remain secret; we mean instead that we individually control the degree to which, and the people to whom, our inner lives are revealed.7 From Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) to Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the Supreme Court has affirmed that privacy is a fundamental Constitutional value and located its roots in the First, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments. In an elegant summary of the underlying theory, Constitutional scholar Kenneth Karst has argued that privacy has a three-part architecture. Privacy means first of all “informational privacy”—control over personal information and judgments. Such privacy is in turn the basis of a person’s capacity for friendship and intimacy. Lastly it is the foundation of moral autonomy and liberty, since freedom is premised on making important decisions based on independent judgment. Inhabitants of a country who lose the guarantee of privacy also eventually lose the capacity for making friends and the capacity for political freedom.9

As necessary to democracy as this non-transparency of persons is the transparency of government actions. Because we have, for the past three decades, focused so intensely on the Constitutional guarantee of personal privacy but not on the corresponding requirement of the non-privacy (or publicness, or publication) of the acts of governors, it is useful now to recall how many times the Constitution pauses to require the act of creating of an open record: “Each house [of Congress] shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same” with “the Yeas and Nays of the Members . . . entered on the Journal” (Article I, Section 5);10 a roll-call vote, recording not just numbers but names, is required when Congress overrides a presidential veto (I, 7); “a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time” (I, 9); presidential objections to a piece of legislation must be forwarded to the house in which the legislation originated and published in their journal (I, 7); every Congressional vote, with the exception of a vote on adjournment, “shall be presented to the President” (I, 7); the counting of the Electoral College votes must take place in the presence of the full Congress (II, 1; Amendment 12); the president is authorized to require the “opinion in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments” (II, 2); the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient” (II, 3); treason proceedings will take place in “open Court” (III, 3) and criminal prosecutions in a “public trial” (Amendment 6).11 Unlike Article I (on the Congress) and Article II (on the presidency), Article III (on the courts) does not specify the keeping of records; but the assumption of open record-keeping is indicated by the opening clause of Article IV (on the states): “Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records and judicial Proceedings of every other state.”

The obligation of each branch to make its actions public—to make them visible both to the population and to the other branches—is often construed as a right belonging to the population, the right of access to information or “freedom of information,” and is closely bound up with First Amendment protections of free speech. Though scholars and jurists disagree about the extent to which access to government information is guaranteed by the Constitution (as well as by subsequent legislative acts, particularly the Freedom of Information Act of 1966 and the later 1972–1978 statutes), it is hard to disagree with the stark argument—made with particular force by Alexander Meiklejohn and Cass Sunstein—that democratic deliberation is impossible without this access to information: “If information is kept secret, public deliberation cannot occur.” Secrecy, continues Sunstein, “is inconsistent with self-rule.” Or, as the local resolution of Astoria, Oregon, recently phrased it, “Secrecy . . . undermines established norms for civil discourse between government and those it would govern.” Sunstein identifies citizen deliberation as the primary benefit of open government, but he also identifies other benefits, including “checks and balances” (one branch cannot check the other if it does not know what the other is doing), “deterrence” (national security may actually be strengthened by revelation of the country’s resources), and “sunlight as disinfectant” (if deliberations are carried out in secret, “participants may be less careful to ensure their behavior is unaffected by illegitimate or irrelevant considerations”).

No exit yet

Dupa "criza nu e treaba guvernului, economia noastra o sa isi revina dupa ce isi revin economiile dezvoltate", stupiditate contrazisa atat de exemplul polonez cat si de realitatea curenta, o noua perla strategic a Nenumitului, respectiv - "Cel mai bun raspuns al Romaniei la presiunea globalizarii este apartenenta la UE". Ultra-suficienta strategie economica deci, si partea buna este ca este deja 'mission accomplished'.

In acelasi timp, razboiul impotriva Parlamentului continua printr-o miscare simbolica surprinzatoare, respectiv daramarea gardului de beton, un fel de Zid al Berlinului care desparte Romania de adevarata democratie. Considerand soliditatea respectivei constructii as zice ca cea mai cea mai buna tehnologie pentru a realiza acest obiectiv cu maxim de zgomot este o bateri de tunuri anti-tanc. Fac si baietii exercitii, se obisnuieste si institutia cu ideea.

Cugetarea zilei - rich people are way better of in poor countries, pornind de la intrebarea "de ce oamenii astia care au tone de bani in Elvetia, furati din Romania, continua sa locuiasca aici?". Pentru ca aici stiu sa faca bani, pentru ca aici isi pot cumpara protectie politica si legala, pentru ca aici isi pot face legi pentru propriul benefit si, nu in ultimul rand, aici sunt mai presus de societate si cetatenii 'normali'.