People must be free to seek, learn, know, and share verifiable truth. Recent investigative reports suggest Cambridge Analytica illegally accessed and weaponized the Facebook data of 50 million users, touching 57 billion “friend pairs”, as part of a coordinated plot to distort the informational environment around tens of millions of American voters, to block access … Continue reading Data Sovereignty Must Be Protected
We need to admit two things about elections: first, they need to be 100% citizen-centered; second, citizens need to go the extra mile whenever necessary to make elections work. The first point is about legitimacy; the second is about making sure we can have it, given the imperfection of all systems known to date. Every … Continue reading Future Voting: Free, Fair, Efficient
Pres. Barack Obama praised African community values and called Africans to transcend conflict and promote government from the ground up and peaceful transfers of power, democratic values and international cooperation, in his first presidential visit to subsaharan Africa. Addressing Ghana’s parliament in Accra, Obama outlined US policy toward Africa and said endemic conflict was holding back African development.
The US president said he had called for $63 billion in US spending for health initiatives across the continent, including money to fight malaria, polio, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. Disease and conflict have devastated the population of Africa, reducing life-expectancy in many countries to under 40 years. Of the 27 nations with life-expectancy under 50 years, 26 of them are in Africa (Afghanistan is the other). Life-expectancy in Ghana is just under 60, a fact which underscores the positive quality-of-life gains that can emerge from peace and rule of law.
Continue reading “Obama Speech in Ghana Praises Good Governance, Calls for Community Outreach”
The Poet Economist 