Ramon Lull, Medieval poly­math from the Bal­aer­ic Islands

This impor­tant paper on medieval elec­toral the­o­ry does­n’t come from his­to­ri­ans, but from math­e­mati­cians. Their inter­est is that the medieval Cata­lan schol­ar Ramon Lull (or Llull) (b.1232‑d.1315) antic­i­pat­ed the math­e­mat­i­cal the­o­ries of elec­toral sys­tems of the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry known to us through Bor­da and Con­dorcet. Appar­ent­ly, recent­ly dis­cov­ered medieval man­u­scripts reveal that Lull had devel­oped a quite sim­i­lar the­o­ry. This inter­ests me, of course, as the his­to­ry of elec­toral sys­tems is part of what I explore, but more impor­tant than the math­e­mat­i­cal accom­plish­ment is the impli­ca­tion that monas­tic insti­tu­tions in the Mid­dle Ages took elec­tion pro­ce­dures very seriously.

Cana­dian Press car­ried an item about the pub­li­ca­tion of this paper, which was sub­se­quently picked up by oth­er news agen­cies. The folks at CP appar­ently scan the Jour­nal of Exper­i­men­tal Botany on a reg­u­lar basis. Good on them. The dis­cov­ery of a 2,700 year old mar­i­juana stash, which 18 sci­en­tists sub­jected to thor­ough analy­sis, is a cheer­ful item of news in these gloomy times. Appar­ently, it was potent chron­ic, clear­ly grown for its psy­chotropic qual­i­ties (female only, high in THC) and accom­pa­nied by appro­pri­ate para­pher­na­lia. Read more »

If any­thing is sacred the human body is sacred - Whit­man

In today’s prud­ish, pruri­ent and bil­ious North Amer­i­can cul­ture, Walt Whit­man is as sub­ver­sive as he was in the 19th cen­tu­ry. In “I Sing the Body Elec­tric”, prob­a­bly the best poem in the Chil­dren of Adam sec­tion of Leaves of Grass, he pro­claimed his per­son­al man­i­festo: look at the bod­ies of human beings, if you want to see the divine, the sacred, and moral truth. The rant­i­ng, per­verse ped­dlers of pho­ny “val­ues” — the pul­pit screech­ers and Con­ser­v­a­tive haters of life — know noth­ing of truth, beau­ty, or moral­i­ty. There is more moral­i­ty in a sin­gle line of Leaves of Grass than in a mil­lion ser­mons of church­ly bullshit.

16731. (Chief Elec­toral Offi­cer of Cana­da) A His­to­ry of the Vote in Canada
16732. (Ter­je Ander­son) [in blog Dai­ly Kos] Why We Stand in Lline to Vote ― A Historical 
. . . . . Pho­to Essay [arti­cle]
16733. [4] (Walt Whit­man) Leaves of Grass: Inscrip­tions [verse]
16734. (Jamie Coomarasamy) No Apa­thy on U. S. Elec­tion Day [arti­cle]
16735. (Alas­tair Law­son) Pro­file: Jigme Khe­sar Nam­gyel Wangchuck [arti­cle] Read more »

In 1720, France suf­fered a bank­ing and cred­it cri­sis, and an eco­nom­ic melt­down, because of a bub­ble in its new­ly con­trived stock mar­ket. The cri­sis spread through the bank­ing and cred­it sys­tems of Europe. The super-rich, who had been spec­u­lat­ing wild­ly and mak­ing mon­ey through spe­cial deals with the State, war finance, and an un-mon­i­tored and un-reg­u­lat­ed stock mar­ket, were quick to get them­selves bailed out and their inter­ests pro­tect­ed, but for mil­lions the cri­sis meant ruin and star­va­tion. At the cen­ter of this sto­ry, which should be strange­ly famil­iar-sound­ing to a read­er in 2008, was the Scot­tish pro­fes­sion­al gam­bler, John Law, who became France’s “Chair­man of the Fed”, as well as the cre­ator of the infa­mous Mis­sis­sip­pi Com­pa­ny, which was at the cen­ter of the mar­ket bubble.
Read more »

Rothkopf has cre­at­ed an inten­tion­al rein­car­na­tion of C. Wright Mills’ old Pow­er Elite, but with­out Mills’ ide­o­log­i­cal fool­ish­ness. With his unusu­al­ly broad expe­ri­ence in busi­ness, jour­nal­ism, Wall Street, the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary, the Intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, and gov­ern­ment ― but nev­er in a posi­tion where he was sub­li­mat­ed into, or iden­ti­fied with the cir­cles of pow­er ― Rothkopf is in an ide­al posi­tion to give a real­is­tic descrip­tion of the rough­ly six thou­sand peo­ple who exer­cise the most pow­er and influ­ence on our globe. I don’t always agree with his analy­sis, and his con­cep­tu­al cat­e­gories are thor­ough­ly con­ven­tion­al, but the book is essen­tial for any­one who wants to form a plau­si­ble pic­ture of how the world works. This has always been the aim of my research­es. Most things in this book ring true, as far as I’m concerned.

This very inter­est­ing arti­cle in Glob­al Media Jour­nal [7 (13), 2008] by an Aus­tralian schol­ar points out that what­ev­er the motives, or the out­come of the inva­sion of Iraq, it result­ed in the sud­den emer­gence of an active and free press in that coun­try. Tak­ing us on a tour of its vital­i­ty and evi­dent pop­u­lar­i­ty, he points out that this devel­op­ment will pro­found­ly affect the future of the Mid­dle East. And he is keen on its poten­tial for over­turn­ing the clichés and car­toon-analy­sis that out­siders have long imposed on the com­plex­i­ties of that region. Rich in facts and detail.

It’s a bit of a sur­prise that the Office of the Chief Elec­toral Offi­cer would pro­duce a charm­ing­ly writ­ten and graph­i­cal­ly pleas­ing book — aren’t those folks sup­posed to be soul­less, humour­less bureau­crats? And it presents the his­to­ry of the fran­chise in Cana­da with sys­tem­at­ic schol­ar­ship. It begins by men­tion­ing the rep­re­sen­ta­tive insti­tu­tions of Native Cana­di­ans, and gives a brief dis­cus­sion of the elect­ed assem­bly that exist­ed in New France, the Con­seil de Québec, between 1657 and 1674, only to be sup­pressed by the infa­mous French Sec­re­tary of State, Jean-Bap­tiste Col­bert, who firm­ly rep­ri­mand­ed Fron­tenac for his “inno­va­tion”. Most inter­est­ing to me were the detailed his­to­ries of the fran­chise in all the British North Amer­i­can colonies before Cana­di­an Con­fed­er­a­tion. Read more »