politics

This is Election, the weekly Cambridge politics podcast, which tackles the biggest questions from new angles. Last season it asked the questions no-one else did in the run up to the UK's General Election: in Season II, it's going international. 

From January until April, Election will look at the US Presidential election and other elections around the world, exploring the current state of democracy and the many challenges it faces in 2016. 

It will continue to take the temperature of British politics, after last year's remarkable election and the even more remarkable events that followed. Can Corbyn hold the Labour Party together? Will Britain be leaving the EU? Where is opposition to the government going to come from? 

With David Runciman, Helen Thompson, Finbarr Livesey and Chris Brooke, plus new voices and a new series of guests, Election promises insights from the worlds of science, history, philosophy and beyond. 

A new episode every Thursday morning: please join us for the most interesting politics conversation out there.

http://www.cam.ac.uk/election


ELECTION

SNOWDEN

surveillance

Venezuela's Supreme Court thrust that country back into the limelight this week, deciding there will be no appeal to the close election results of spring's controversial elections. This week, “Latin Pulse” uses that decision to return to Venezuelan politics.  The program delves into voter fraud and coercion in Venezuela.  The program also looks at the aftereffects of the Edward Snowden affair and what it has meant to the evolving the diplomatic context in Latin America.  The program tracks how the Obama administration's approach to Snowden has affected relations with more than Venezuela, but also Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador.

The program includes in-depth interviews with:

Michael McCarthy of Johns Hopkins University; and
Peter Hakim of the Inter-American Dialogue.


Executive Producer: Rick Rockwell
Production Assistant: Alexia Campbell 
Associate Producer: Curt Devine.

The photo of  Luisa Estello Morales, the president of Venezuela’s Supreme Court is from Iran’s Press TV and is in the public domain.

“Latin Pulse” is produced at American University’s School of Communication. This program is sponsored by the university’s Center for Latin American & Latino Studies (CLALS), in association with Link TV.

http://www.american.edu/soc/
http://www.american.edu/clals/latin-pulse.cfm



Venezuelan Court Rejects Election Appeal & the Snowden Affair (Lp8092013)

Privacy experts Julia Angwin and Hanni Fakhoury discuss how to protect your data online — and whether privacy matters in a digital world. 

Frontline Roundtable: Privacy and Surveillance

Tony Bunyan, State Watch

Spying on all of us: UK-GCHQ, USA-NSA, 'Five Eyes' and the EU

The revelations by Edward Snowden of data surveillance - internal and external - by the USA, UK and other EU states has raised important questions about data protection and privacy. These issues are being taken up by a wide range of NGOs and others. This talk/paper will argue that data protection and privacy abuses by the USA-NSA and UK-GCHQ concerns the "gatherers" (the surveillance agencies) of personal data. What urgently needs to be investigated, studied and exposed are the "users" of mass data surveillance (CIA and FBI in the USA, MI5, MI6, Special Branch and law enforcement agencies (LEAs) and the "targets" of the "users" (who and why are people or groups targeted). Account also has to be taken of the "suppliers" to the "users" (multinational companies) - the "suppliers" are part of the security-industrial complex in the EU who develop and provide the technology for surveillance and enforcement. It will argue that our attention should be centred on what is happening in the EU, rather than on the USA - some reforms may happen there but there is as yet no impetus or attention to the ensure openness and accountability of national internal and external agencies and LEAs in EU Member States. What is required is a holistic approach which will take many years of diligent research by academics, journalists and civil society groups. 

Tony Bunyan (2014) Spying On All Of Us- UKGCHQ, USA - NSA, 'Five Eyes' And The EU

Eva Magdalena Stambøl, independent researcher, Norway/Colombia.

EU Security Governance Along the Cocaine Routes: ‘Othering’ in External Threat Conceptualization of Cocaine Trafficking and ‘Transnational Organized Crime’

The paper looks at European Union projects and policies on drugs and organized crime in Latin America, as well as along the cocaine trafficking routes from Latin America and the Caribbean to West Africa, as an entry point to explore the development of EU (external) drug policy and broader EU foreign and security policies. 

The key principle that underpins EU drug policy – i.e., an ‘integrated and balanced approach’ is examined in relation to EU foreign and security policies. In doing so, the axiomatic relationship between security and development is addressed. Based on a mapping of EU projects and a study of EU strategy documents, I argue that rather than ‘integration and balance’, EU foreign policy on drugs in Latin America and the Caribbean is undergoing a bifurcation between, on the one hand a development-focused ‘soft end’ with projects of demand reduction and (alternative) development, and – on the other – a security-focused ‘hard end’ with projects targeting cocaine trafficking and organized crime – as well an increasing emphasis on the latter. The process is consistent with developments in EU Member States, where demand reduction is increasingly integrated into broader public health policy and supply reduction is integrated into security strategies targeting organized crime. These processes question whether a particular EU drug policy has a place in the future.

Finally, EU’s efforts against cocaine trafficking outside its borders are looked at in the context of the development of the EU as a security zone – with the concepts of internal and external security. EU foreign security policy is seen in terms of ‘extra-territorializing’ the management of security threats to third countries. West Africa is identified as a larger security concern to the EU than cocaine trafficking per se, as it seems to be perceived as a space where cocaine trafficking interconnects with a plethora of different ‘threats’ at Europe’s southern doorstep, such as armed conflict, de-stabilization of fragile states, terrorism and ‘facilitated illegal immigration’. Questions are raised with regard to processes of ‘othering’ in the construction of external security threats to EU internal security, and to how EU’s programme on dismantling ‘transnational organized crime’ along the cocaine routes might have unintended consequences.The key principle that underpins EU drug policy – i.e., an ‘integrated and balanced approach’ is examined in relation to EU foreign and security policies. In doing so, the axiomatic relationship between security and development is addressed. Based on a mapping of EU projects and a study of EU strategy documents, I argue that rather than ‘integration and balance’, EU foreign policy on drugs in Latin America and the Caribbean is undergoing a bifurcation between, on the one hand a development-focused ‘soft end’ with projects of demand reduction and (alternative) development, and – on the other – a security-focused ‘hard end’ with projects targeting cocaine trafficking and organized crime – as well an increasing emphasis on the latter. The process is consistent with developments in EU Member States, where demand reduction is increasingly integrated into broader public health policy and supply reduction is integrated into security strategies

Eva Magdalena Stambøl (2014) EU Security Governance Along The Cocaine Routes

From the University of Cambridge comes ELECTION, our weekly Politics Podcast; asking the questions that no one else is in the run-up to the British General Election with the greatest minds inside and outside the political arena. 

Can democracy adapt to our strained political system? Who (if anyone) will ‘win’ in 2015? What can the lessons of the past teach us about the future? 

Professor David Runciman interviews and puts these questions to philosophers, historians, scientists, and political thinkers – with enlightening results – in a weekly podcast series coming from his office in the Department of Politics and International Studies. 

More information at http://www.cam.ac.uk/election

S01-EP06 - Rae Langton on Charlie Hebdo, free speech vs hate speech & blasphemy

S01-EP05 - Clare Jackson on the United Kingdom, Scotland & the politics of memory

S01-EP04 - John Naughton on Facebook in Politics, Edward Snowden, & Surveillance

S01-EP03 - Martin Jacques on the global perspective, Britain’s decline, & China’s rise

S01-EP02 - Martin Rees on surviving this century, scientists in politics, and 2015

S01-EP01 - Maurice Glasman on democracy, creative destruction and Wolf Hall

In 2003 Jenny Clay Strauss, daughter of the German Jewish historian of political philosophy Leo Strauss and herself a professor of classics, wrote to the New York Times to protest articles that presented her father “as the mastermind behind the neoconservative ideologues who control United States foreign policy.” She went on: “He reaches out from his 30-year-old grave, we are told, to direct a "cabal" (a word with distinct anti-Semitic overtones) of Bush administration figures hoping to subject the American people to rule by a ruthless elite.” In “A Cabal We Deserve: Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and Public Intellectual Culture,” Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft explores the meanings of conspiracy theories surrounding Leo Strauss and the Straussians. What values of transparency in democratic governance, what attitudes towards lying in politics, animate them? What ideas about conservative as opposed to progressive intellectuals? And what expectations for public intellectual life in a democratic society are bound up with all this talk of conspiracy? 

Leo Strauss and Public Intellectual Culture

Human-level (“general”) AI is more difficult to achieve than most people think. One key obstacle is relevance, a conceptual version of the frame problem. Another is lack of the semantic web. Yet another is the difficulty of computer vision. So artificial general intelligence (AGI) isn’t on the horizon. Possibly, it may never be achieved. No AGI means no Singularity.

Even so, there’s already plenty to worry about—and future AI advances will add more. Areas of concern include unemployment, computer companions, and autonomous robots (some, military). Worries about the (illusory) Singularity have had the good effect of waking up the AI community (and others) to these dangers. At last, they are being taken seriously.

Professor Margaret Boden is a world-leading academic in the study of intelligence, both artificial and otherwise. She is is Research Professor of Cognitive Science at the Department of informatics at the University of Sussex, where her work embraces the fields of artificial intelligence, psychology, philosophy, cognitive and computer science. She was the founding-Dean of Sussex University’s School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences, a pioneering centre for research into intelligence and the mechanisms underlying it — in humans, other animals, or machines. The School’s teaching and research involves an unusual combination of the humanities, science, and technology.

Professor Boden has also been an important participant in the recent international discussions over the long-term impacts of AI. She was a member of the AAAI’s 08/09 Presidential Panel on long-term AI futures (http://www.aaai.org/Organization/presidential-panel.php), and also took part in the recent Puerto Rico conference on the Future of AI, co-organised by CSER (http://futureoflife.org/misc/ai_conference); she is therefore uniquely well-placed to discuss near- and long-term prospects in AI. 

Human - Level AI- Is It Looming Or Illusory?

During Thursday’s debate in New Hampshire, while Sen. Bernie Sanders conceded former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has more experience in foreign affairs, he questioned her judgment for voting for the Iraq War. "But experience is not the only point—judgment is," Sanders said. "And once again, back in 2002, when we both looked at the same evidence about the wisdom of the war in Iraq, one of us voted the right way, and one of us didn’t." Clinton repeatedly touted her time as secretary of state. "I was very flattered when Henry Kissinger said I ran the State Department better—better than anybody had run it in a long time," she said. ||| Visit http://democracynow.org to watch the full daily news program, read the transcript, or search our  vast online archive. Livestream weekdays 8-9am ET. Follow Democracy Now! on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Google+ and Pinterest.

Sanders & Clinton Spar on 2002 Iraq Vote; Clinton Praises Henry Kissinger

Politics in Brazil and diplomacy with Argentina provide the central themes this week on Latin Pulse. The program examines the meltdown of the administration of President Dilma Rousseff in Brazil as she copes with a major corruption scandal and the threat of impeachment due to charges she abused her powers.  The program unravels what is behind the charges of abuse of power against not just Rousseff, but also former President Lula and other top politicians.  The program also provides an analysis of President Obama's trip to Argentina and why it was met with mixed results by Argentines.


Matthew Taylor of American University; and
Chris Sabatini of Columbia University and Latin America Goes Global.


Executive Producer: Rick Rockwell; 
Technical Director: Jim Singer; and
Associate Producer: Natalie Ottinger.


The photo of President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil and President Mauricio Macri of Argentina is an edited photo from Agência Brasil, which offers its materials as part of a Creative Commons licensing agreement. 


Political Crisis in Brazil & the Aftereffects of the Obama Trip to Argentina (Lp4012016)

Chapter I - On China (Henry Kissinger), China's Economy (Arthur Kroeber)

This week, “Latin Pulse” commemorates the 40th anniversary of the coup in Uruguay with a retrospective and analysis of Operation Condor and how it had an effect on Uruguay and all of Latin America. The program includes an interview with Uruguay's ombudsman for human rights who was a target of Operation Condor. And the program explains how that secret assassination program is still relevant today. The news segment covers the protests in Brazil that intensified this week concerning corruption and spending on infrastructure to support international sports contests.


The program includes in-depth interviews with:

Juan Raul Ferreira, the Human Rights Ombudsman of Uruguay; and
John Dinges of Columbia University.


Executive Producer: Rick Rockwell
Associate Producer: Curt Devine
Writer: Zach Cohen.


The prison photo is of Juan Maria Bordaberry, one of Uruguay’s former dictators; the photo is from the Uruguayan government and is in the public domain.

To see other parts of the series of conversations with Juan Raul Ferreira, please see these other links,

Part I: https://soundcloud.com/latinpulse/reflections-human-rights-uruguay-beyond-lp5242013

Part III: https://soundcloud.com/latinpulse/progressive-uruguay-marijuana-abortion-same-sex-marriage-lp8022013

“Latin Pulse” is produced at American University’s School of Communication. This program is sponsored by the university’s Center for Latin American & Latino Studies (CLALS), in association with Link TV.

http://www.american.edu/soc/
http://www.american.edu/clals/latin-pulse.cfm
