Citizen Cartwright

A hopeful look at democracy

“Democracy is not facing a global extinction event” headlines a New York Times opinion article by longtime Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign affairs reporter Serge Schmemann, who currently is a member of the Times editorial board.

“The election of Donald Trump and news of political turmoil in many other democracies has created the impression that liberal democracy is everywhere in retreat in the face of authoritarians feeding on discontent over economic woes, rapid social change, mass migration, disinformation and general malaise,” Schmemann says.

“But as The Times’s Berlin bureau chief Jim Tankersley suggested in a recent analysis of Germany’s plight, 'not all malaise is the same.' Popular discontent in Western democracies may have broadly similar sources, but the political consequences are as different as the leaders and systems in each country.” 

“Scanning the global political storms separately reveals their unique characteristics and challenges, and the way many are rooted more in a backlash against incumbent leaders than in a new embrace of the far right,” Schmemann says. 

And “the history of the United States — the lodestar of modern democracies — is hardly one of unity and harmony until the rise of Trumpism,” he says.

“That the threats to democracy are diverse may not be a great consolation to those worried about where it is headed, and there’s every reason to remain vigilant,” Schmemann says. “But it should be reassuring that democracy is not facing a global extinction event but more a patchwork of storms, and that democracies have usually found a way to weather them.”

Good news in 2024

Fix the News’ year-end roundup has 86 examples of good news in global health, conservation, living standards, energy, human rights, and science and tech.

 

No matter how busy you may be, I hope you’ll at least have time to scroll through this issue to experience the abundance of good will and good work that’s improving the lives of our human family in so many ways.

Thank you, Jimmy Carter

Today is the national day of mourning for the former president.

 

It’s been very touching for me to work on this blog in the middle of the night while watching BBC News’ live coverage of people filing past Carter’s casket as he lies in state at the U.S. Capitol.

 

In the BBC audio that’s looping are comments by Carter’s grandson, Jason, who talks about Carter’s “foundational respect for human beings” and his value of democracy and common humanity in pursuit of shared goals. 

 

The lying in state ends at 7 a.m., and the national funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. 

 

President Biden is to delivery the eulogy. All of the living presidents are expected to attend.

 

“President Jimmy Carter had no idea what he was going to do next when he delivered his farewell address to the nation in January 1981,” says The New York Times. "Defeated after a single term by Ronald Reagan, he simply told Americans that he would leave the White House and 'take up once more the only title in our democracy superior to that of president — the title of citizen.’”

 

“There is little question among historians that Citizen Carter carved a new mold for life after the Oval Office and that his post-presidency was the most consequential in modern history,” the Times says.

 

A Times editorial published when Carter died on Dec. 29 is headlined, “America needs more Jimmy Carters.”

 

“Up to now, Jimmy Carter, who died on Sunday at age 100 in Plains, Ga., has been judged to be a middle-of-the-pack president, his one term in office remembered for circumstances and events that simply overwhelmed him: the seizure in Iran of 52 American hostages, the bungled attempt to rescue them, the gasoline lines, inflation, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

 

“Yet he is also considered one of America’s greatest ex-presidents, for using the residual star power of his office to help his successors and his country as a peacemaker, backstage diplomat, human rights champion, monitor of free elections and advocate for the homeless while finding time to write poetry and, by his own example, providing the best possible case for traditional religious values.

 

“In 2002, having been nominated many times for the Nobel Peace Prize, Mr. Carter finally won it for his 'vital contribution' to the Camp David agreement, which set the stage for peace between Israel and Egypt, as well as for his commitment to human rights, his work fighting tropical diseases and for furthering democracy everywhere.

“His life offers countless lessons for leaders everywhere.”

 

“Compared with Mr. Carter, most former presidents struggled to use their stature for the common weal. Most wrote memoirs. Some disappeared into private life; some set up foundations; some went around collecting large sums for speaking. Mr. Carter took risks and played crucial roles as an honest broker in nuclear talks with North Korea and in civil conflicts on the continent of Africa and in the Middle East.

“He described his second career as 'waging peace.' That work remains far from finished, and it remains for those who admired Mr. Carter to continue.”

 

Here is how to watch and stream the funeral, from USA Today. 

Good news on tuberculosis, solar energy, clean water

We have a couple of issues waiting for us from our friends at Fix the News. They’re putting together their year-end wrap-up for next week, before taking a break until mid-January.

 

From the Nov. 28 edition: 

 

— Africa has made the greatest progress among all regions in tackling tuberculosis — the world’s deadliest infectious disease — with a 42 percent reduction in deaths since 2015, according to a World Health Organization report.

 

—  It took the solar PV industry 68 years to reach 1 terawatt (a trillion watts) of installed capacity — and just two more to add the second terawatt. Two terawatts of solar "is equivalent to the total installed electricity capacity of India, the USA and UK combined,” says the Global Solar Council.

 

— Between 2000 and 2020, access to safe water in China increased from 46 percent to 91 percent, according to the journal BMC Public Health.

Grateful

This Thanksgiving, as always, I’m grateful for you, dear readers.

 

And, as I’ve said before, I’m specifically grateful to the reader who alerted us to the good news aggregators at Australia’s Fix the News.

 

Fix the News founder Angus Hervey, who grew up in apartheid South Africa, wrote in a long essay in response to our U.S. election results, which I ran on Nov. 15:

 

"For the first time since I can remember, I'm not sure the good guys are going to win.

 

"I find myself returning to the lessons of South Africa. That change happened, not because it was inevitable, but because people made it inevitable. Each step forward mattered and people kept on believing in the right thing, even when that belief seemed foolish. In the end the impossible happened not because history ordained it, but because ordinary people kept pushing against the darkness until finally, impossibly, the light broke through.”

 

He said Fix the News will be writing “stories about how progress happens not through some invisible hand of history, but through the visible hands of people who refuse to give up on it.”

 

I emailed Hervey to let him know how much his work means to us here, while, as he put it in his essay, "every media outlet in the world” is "shrieking about Trump,” one way or the other.

 

He emailed back saying he appreciates the encouragement he’s gotten in response to his essay and that he’s feeling "more resolute than ever about the mission of Fix the News.”

 

As Stephen Hawking said, “We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star.” And blogger Maria Popova pointed out that we’re early in our evolution, so it’s to be expected that we mess things up a lot.

 

I’m grateful for the feeling of belonging and empowerment I get from our global connection to Hervey and others as we all stumble forward as best we can.

Good news on global health, climate change

Among the items in the latest issue of Fix the News:

 

— Tuberculosis is the world's leading infectious cause of death, after being replaced by the coronavirus during the pandemic.  TB caused an estimated 1.25 million global deaths in 2023, down from 1.32 million in 2022, 1.42 million in 2021, 1.40 million in 2020 and 1.34 million in 2019, the World Health Organization reports. 

 

So death rates are down. But, as Fix the News notes, the headlines tend to be the bad news that TB is the top killer and that cases are rising. Meanwhile, the WHO report says, "Most of the global increase in incident cases between 2022 and 2023 reflects population growth.”

 

"Urgent action is required to end the global TB epidemic by 2030," a goal that's been adopted by all member nations of the UN and WHO, the report says. Shall we take a second to celebrate that this is even a feasible goal?

 

— A new class of drugs that mimics the action of a naturally occurring hormone, glucagon-like peptide (glp-1) “could transform how chronic diseases are managed,” says The Economist. For decades used to treat diabetes, they’re now “wildly popular” as Wegovy for weight loss and showing promise in trials for sleep apnea and kidney disease.

 

They’re also being tested for liver disease and substance-abuse disorders. And they’re being discussed as a treatment for long-term infections, to delay dementia and even for anti-aging and longevity. 

 

— Materials scientists at UC Berkeley have invented a fluffy yellow powder called COF-999; less than half a pound of it can suck as much carbon dioxide out of the air in a year as a large tree, says the Los Angeles Times. The carbon dioxide then can be pumped underground and the powder re-used. 

Good news on global health, justice, dogs as environmentalists

Breaking news last Friday got in the way of our usual good news focus, so let’s do it now.

 

Fix the News has reduced its free publication to once a week with about a dozen items. So I’ve finally subscribed. The subscriber’s edition this week contains nearly three dozen additional items. Here are three of this week’s offerings:

 

— Egypt is malaria-free, after a nearly 100-year effort by the Egyptian government and people to end a disease that’s plagued the country since at least 4000 BC, the World Health Organization says.

 

— Countries like Germany and the Netherlands long have demonstrated that a workable alternative to poorly-maintained and overcrowded prisons can exist, says Fix the News. In South Carolina, the Restoring Promise initiative, inspired by Germany, reduced prison violence while promoting inmates' autonomy and dignity, says The Marshall Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that says it "seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system."

 

— Dogs have helped us humans find illicit substances, missing people, and forensic evidence since the 19th century, thanks to their acute sense of smell. Now, conservationists are taking advantage of their olfactory potential. A group of dogs in Australia has been trained to sniff out invasive plants underwater, to find bird and bat carcasses on wind farms, and even to locate animal scat left behind by particular animals, clueing researchers to where endangered species are still present, says bioGraphic, an editorially independent, non-profit magazine powered by the California Academy of Sciences.

Musk’s ‘secret’ conversations with Putin

The world’s richest man, who has “deep business ties” with U.S. military and intelligence agencies and a security clearance giving him access to certain classified information, "has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022,” The Wall Street Journal reports.

 

"The discussions, confirmed by several current and former U.S., European and Russian officials, touch on personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions,” the WSJ says.

 

Putin asked Musk to avoid activating his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, according to two people who were briefed on the request.

 

"Knowledge of Musk’s Kremlin contacts appears to be a closely held secret in government,” the WSJ says. "The topic is highly sensitive, given Musk’s increasing involvement in the Trump campaign and the approaching U.S. presidential election.”

 

A person aware of the conversations says the government has a dilemma because it's so dependent on Musk's technologies. SpaceX launches national security satellites into orbit and is the company NASA depends on to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station. 

“They don’t love it,” the person says, referring to the Musk-Putin contacts. But no alerts have been raised by the administration over possible security breaches by Musk, the person says.

 

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Musk at first made strong public statements of support for Ukraine and donated to it several hundred Starlink terminals. By July, about 15,000 terminals were providing free internet access to areas of Ukraine destroyed by the Russian attacks.

 

But Musk’s view appeared to change. In September, Ukrainian military operatives weren’t able to use Starlink terminals to guide sea drones to attack a Russian naval base in Crimea, which Russia has occupied since 2014. Ukraine tried to persuade Musk to activate the Starlink service in the area, but it didn’t happen, the WSJ has reported.

Musk's company extended restrictions on the use of Starlink in offensive operations by Ukraine. Musk said he made the move because Starlink is intended for civilian uses and he believed any Ukrainian attack on Crimea could spark a nuclear war.

 

Musk's moves coincided with public and private pressure from Russia, the WSJ says.

 

One current and one former intelligence source say Musk and Putin have continued to have contact since then and into this year as Musk began increasing his criticism of U.S. military aid to Ukraine and became involved in the Trump election campaign.

 

Through the first months of the year, Musk said he wouldn't back any presidential candidate, while at the same time holding private conversations discussing how he could get Trump elected. Musk publicly endorsed Trump in July and said he planned to commit as much as $45 million a month to a new super PAC. The effort included hiring canvassers in battleground states.

 

Trump has said he plans to make Musk the head of a “government efficiency commission.”

 

Musk didn’t respond to its requests for comment, the WSJ says. He's called criticism from some that he's become an apologist for Putin “absurd” and has said his companies “have done more to undermine Russia than anything.”

Good news for global democracy so far in 2024

Our Australian friends at Fix the News have published the first edition of their once-again-weekly newsletter, with its reduced number of items.

 

I’ll leave it to you to read the dozen summaries — of good news on environmental protection, health care, and advances in our understanding of the universe — so we can focus on an item that’s a main focus of this blog: democracy.

 

Last week, The Economist ran an article saying “democracy has proved to be reasonably resilient in some 42 countries” of the 67 countries that have held national elections so far this year.

 

The good news, according to The Economist (by the way, I don't know how Fix the News is able to give us access to articles like this one, for which a subscription is required, but I'm grateful for the access):

 

— Voter turnout has increased for the first time in two decades

 

— Efforts to undermine elections using disinformation campaigns fueled by social media and artificial intelligence often have failed

 

— Independent institutions such as courts often have stood up for liberal values, like rejecting the efforts of a strongman to rule indefinitely

 

— In most places, elections have been more peaceful

 

— Voters have held leaders accountable, either by removing them from office or eliminating their parliamentary majority

 

And now, “democracy will face its most important test” as we Americans vote, The Economist says. 

U.S. to Israel: Allow aid to Gaza or risk losing weapons funding

Israel has 30 days to increase the amount of humanitarian aid it’s allowing into Gaza, or it could risk losing access to U.S. weapons financing, The Associated Press and other media report.

 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent the warning to their Israeli counterparts in a letter dated Sunday.

 

A similar letter Blinken sent to Israeli officials in April led to more humanitarian assistance getting to the Palestinian territory, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said on Tuesday. 

 

But “it’s fallen by over 50 percent from where it was at its peak,” Miller said at a briefing. Blinken and Austin “thought it was appropriate to make clear to the government of Israel that there are changes that they need to make again, to see that the level of assistance making it into Gaza comes back up from the very, very low levels that it is at today.”

 

For Israel to continue qualifying for foreign military financing, the level of aid getting into Gaza must increase to at least 350 trucks a day, Israel must institute additional humanitarian pauses and provide increased security for humanitarian sites, Austin and Blinken say in the letter.

 

U.S. officials say the letter was sent to remind Israel of both its obligations under international humanitarian law and of the Biden administration’s legal obligation to ensure that the delivery of American humanitarian assistance should not be hindered, diverted or held up by a recipient of U.S. military aid.

 

A National Security Memorandum issued by President Biden in February, which applies to all recipients of U.S. security assistance, requires the recipients to provide assurances that they won't use it to violate human rights or restrict humanitarian aid in areas where U.S. weapons are being used, The Times of Israel explains.

 

On Monday, the Israeli military body responsible for managing crossings into Gaza, COGAT, said 30 trucks carrying aid from the World Food Program had entered northern Gaza through the Erez crossing, BBC News says.

That ended a two-week period when the UN said no food aid was delivered to the north, and supplies essential for survival were running out for the 400,000 Palestinians there.