贝恩德Debusmann

贝恩德Debusmann是路透专栏。是他自己的意见。

在美国国会的信心处于历史低点，超过一半的美国人认为共和党和民主党两党正在做的，需要第三方的这种恶劣的工作，以及“功能障碍”这个词已经在共同货币的绘制国家债务超过了辩论。

这是否意味着超过150年的美国政治生活中占据了主导地位的共和党民主党的双寡头垄断收费的钟声？

答案是肯定的，其目的是现行制度不满的选民，绕过传统的选择，通过初选的总统候选人数以百万计的一个初露头角的政治力量。

相反，新的组织， 美国当选表示，希望选民“来决定的问题，找到匹配您的看法，并直接提名的总统和副总统的候选人的问题。“

这是一个新的和非常雄心勃勃的想法，由一个强有力的董事会，其中包括业务主管，经验丰富的政治人物和前政府高级官员，包括前联邦调查局局长威廉韦伯斯特和美国前贸易代表希尔斯的顾问50支持。在黑板上：道舒恩，希拉里的总统竞选工作的一个民意测验。

集团董事长彼得阿克曼，谁负责的法律和外交塔夫茨大学弗莱彻学院，并在20世纪80年代的德雷克塞尔伯纳姆兰伯特，垃圾债券的经销商工作发财。他的儿子埃利奥特是首席运营官。双方都相信，互联网和社会媒体是合适的工具来改变系统功能。

债务辩论加强了那些认为两个政党制度是失败的情况下。本周根据CNN的民调，77％的美国人说，民选官员在华盛顿的表现“宠坏的孩子一样”在拔河，提高债务上限。

舒恩许多美国人的觉醒，在华盛顿与争吵描述为一个“非同寻常的机遇”赢得美国人当选项目的支持，并表示有4万左右的选民增加了他们的签名，在过去几天已收到170万的运动。 “我们正在赢得比任何人都可能有预期的更大的公众接受，”他说。

的网站的访问量也猛增，据美国当选。 Ainsley Perrien，该项目的新闻秘书说：“我们有AmericansElect.org在过去10天里，页面浏览量超过60万，”。 “，并在同一时期，3000多的想法和意见。”

这是一个新的网站和一个有影响力的纽约时报“专栏作家托马斯弗里德曼写道，关于它的热心7月在全国才勉强称为一个组织相当数量的：”什么Amazon.com书籍做什么的iPod音乐，没有什么drugstore.com到药店，美国人选举计划做两方的双寡头垄断，一直支配着美国的政治生活 - 删除真正的竞争壁垒，扁平化的现任，并让人民英寸“

难以克服的障碍

也许吧。美国人的目标选出的道路上有难以克服的障碍：赢得所有50个国家作为一个必不可少的步骤，在六月举行的一个网上公约，2012年，已经签署了选择一个总统候选人的登记选民开放投票副总裁。必须从一个不同的政党（或独立）的竞选搭档。

约书亚莱文，该组的首席技术人员谁加入美国的E - Trade的相同位置的当选，有预测，该小组是规划其网上公约的方式将是投票过程将是在未来的塑造方式的典范。再次，也许。

古老的传统难改。但值得指出，根据调查，41％的美国人所描述的，双方都依赖于作为独立的 - 这是作为一个整体的选民超过极化。

醒悟中间去注册与美国人当选的麻烦，参加在辩论中，挑选候选人？

这是很难预测厌恶深入的调查显示是否会转化为行动，并会尝试一些新的和未经检验的。美国人当选的是希望做的是比上一个古老的故事建立第三方候选人的扭曲，就像在1992年罗斯佩罗（他赢得了几乎20％的选票），在1980年的约翰安德森（6.6％）在2000年或拉尔夫纳德（2.7％）。

本集团的官员说，它的打开第二个21世纪的过程中，而不是第三方。

套用华尔街短语 - 过去的调查不能保证未来的结果，但它要牢记在本文开头提到的调查是非常有用的。盖洛普开始要求在1973年美国人在各机构的信心。然后，42％的受访者表示，他们已经在国会的信心。 2011年6月，它已经下降到12％，死在最后的16所院校名单。

盖洛普开始询问对第三方的支持，于2003年，当40％的受访者表示，目前没有必要为它。 2011年5月，52％的人认为需要有一个第三方。在独立，68％的独立人士是这么认为的。

2012年6月，当美国人选举计划举办网上公约呢？让下注开始。

您可以联系作者在Debusmann@Reuters.com

贝恩德Debusmann是路透专栏。是他自己的意见。

无论是解决如何对美国的国家债务的较量，它会留下持久的凹痕，以其本身就可以做的精神和能力是一个国家的国际形象。 “整个全世界都在看着，”奥巴马总统所说的那样，和它的某些部分是由一个巨大的显示功能障碍感到沮丧。

不说话的僵化教条的思想同样令人印象深刻的反避税痴迷者比超过150年的中流砥柱，美国的民主共和党立法者更合适的阿富汗塔利班的显示。一个直言不讳的英国内阁大臣，文斯电缆，作为世界金融体系构成威胁的“右翼nutters”茶党支持的共和党人。

欧洲其他地方，少犀利的评论家看到了在华盛顿的僵局，提高债务上限，并避免美国衰落的标志的默认。

“专栏作家Ansgar Graw写道：”美国必须从根本上更新自己，在保守的德国报纸Die Welt。 “这意味着双方都必须放置在竞选活动中的共同利益上述收益。”
他说，如果不这样做，可能会导致转向“美国21世纪的危机，到20世纪的主导力量的消亡。”

长期持有美国作为一个民主的能力模型和新的现实的政治家为了反避税的教条的纯度冒着金融浩劫的看法之间的差距，最引人注目的描写之一来自国外，但在在新泽西记录报纸的政治漫画。漫画家麦格丽斯描绘伊拉克总理马利基和阿富汗总理卡尔扎伊一起寻找标志着纸“美国的默认。”

泡沫马利基的嘴说：“也许他们不自治的准备，只是还没有... ...”

在阿富汗和伊拉克侵略的国家和发动战争后，美国已从事昂贵的国家建设的努力，旨在通过美国的民主政体。相信它的优越性已经在美国外交政策的一个常数，由美国前国务卿马德琳奥尔布赖特局长说明了她的著名的观察说：“我们是不可或缺的国家。我们挺起胸膛。我们进一步看到未来。“

世界各地想知​​道如何正确的温斯顿丘吉尔，当他在1947年的讲话中说，过去几个月已经离开华盛顿的一个奇观，像鸡比一个成熟的政治家的共同解决问题的锻炼的游戏，“民主是最恶劣形式的政府，除了那些曾经尝试过，不时为所有其他“。

中国关注事项

中国领导人，世界上人口最多的国家，从来没有赞同这一想法，但没有那么现在比以往任何时候。高于一切，多年来中国奖的稳定性和可预见性，成为美国最大的债权国，积累超过150万亿美元的美国国库券，长期被视为世界上最安全的的资产。

有没有在华盛顿扯皮安全和可预见的的国家债务。

这是为什么美国国务卿希拉里的亚洲之行期间，去了相当大的长度，包括中国在内的，本月初，向中国官员担心债务的辩论，是一个完全正常的一部分，在美国的民主进程。 “这些辩论已经在我们生活中的一个常数的整个我们共和国的历史上 - 有时它们是杂乱的，”她说。

说的不错。美国的政治制度是凌乱和disputatious。但来形容已在过去几个月中发生的一切照旧是一个延伸。无论是在美国和国外有越来越多的看法，政治领导层已降到几十年来的最低点。

10美国人响应这个月的盖洛普民意测验中的4个表示，他们看到在华盛顿的领导在其一生中最糟糕的。

一些经验丰富的华盛顿观察家同意。在对全国公共广播电台本周的小组讨论，面试官问诺曼奥恩斯坦保守的美国企业研究所和Alice里夫林的自由主义倾向的布鲁金斯学会，他​​们如何看待目前的领导素质。两个首都的政治体制的重要成员。

奥恩斯坦说：“Inmy一生，我还没有看到一个功能障碍在国会的领导水平，接近我们现在看到的。在过去的领导人总是知道他们来对付你的翅膀（在光谱的远的边），你不得不处理你的白痴，但你会走到一起。“奥恩斯坦是63。

里夫林说，他的政府职位包括副委员长美联储：“我年龄比规范，我会说这是在我的一生中，最失调的国会中最严重的”里夫林80。

（您可以联系作者在bernd.debusmann @ thomsonreuters.com）

贝恩德Debusmann是路透专栏。是他自己的意见。

一个南非诺贝尔和平奖得主，以色列，美国最大的养老基金之一之间的连接？一个国际运动，经济，文化和学术的抵制以色列在约旦河西岸的犹太人定居点。

在南非问题是退休大主教德斯蒙德图图，其作用在20世纪80年代在反对种族隔离的斗争，他获得诺贝尔和平奖和世界各地的成名。养老基金是教师保险及年金协会 - 大学退休股票基金，更好地为TIAA - CREF。承上启下的抵制，撤资和制裁运动，简称为企业发展服务，由巴勒斯坦人于2005年推出。

在一个论坛版文章 “夏洛特观察家，定时恰逢TIAA - CREF的年度股东在夏洛特，北卡罗来纳州，会议于7月19日，大主教斥责后拒绝允许质疑其持有的决议进行表决的养老基金公司在约旦河西岸和东耶路撒冷的经营利润。

图图大主教之间BDS和撤资全球的浪潮中，在基层的积极分子，从而促成了种族隔离制度的崩溃推动下，提请相似之处。

在TIAA - CREF的情况下积极分子属于犹太和平之声，一个小，但越来越多的美国集团说，该基金已否认其投资者的机会“自己决定，如果他们想退休卡特彼勒D - 9推土机的帮助下拆除巴勒斯坦人的家园，威立雅垃圾填埋场，西岸土地和Elbit公司的监控系统，确保在整个西岸和东耶路撒冷的定居点和隔离墙。“

大主教的OP - ED提请回应，强调美国犹太人批评以色列的政策，勿庸置疑的支持之间的深刻分歧。杰弗里爱泼斯坦，在夏洛特的犹太社区领袖，借给他的道德权威，BDS的运动，图图已对准自己与伊朗，哈马斯，真主党和其他敌人的自由和在同一份报纸说， 在一个OP - ED在中东和平“。

大主教曾允许自己被绘制成一个由以色列的敌人以色列国的存在“非法化”的努力，爱泼斯坦写道。这BDS的看法是以色列政府（和美国主流犹太组织），以及批准了一项法律，使受惩罚的罪行，呼吁市民为抵制以色列立法者共享。

随着反生产力的措施，法律是一类本身。 BDS的支持者说，这将加强他们的运动，而不是削弱它。

“这将作为一个镀锌的时刻，说：”丽贝卡Vilkomerson，执行董事犹太和平的声音。 “这已经是大幅增加。”与美国的记者在一个电话会议本周，巴勒斯坦领导人的抵制运动，奥马尔巴尔古提，和以色列BDS的活动家，奥弗尼曼，都认为抵制增长势头国际。

浪潮谴责

期望是一个法律的谴责浪潮，从个人和团体，其中包括一些坚决反对抵制的长长的清单，在以色列外，该运动将刺激。大部分的批评也发表了大赦国际发表声明说，法会“在以色列对言论自由的寒蝉效应”，是“公然企图扼杀和平的持不同政见者和竞选。”

不仅，大赦感叹，那也只是最近通过或已批评以色列的人权，限制言论自由的非政府组织正在考虑的许多法律，以色列民间社会组织的工作，或巴勒斯坦人的权利。

一个“言论自由的侵犯，呼吁英国外交部秘书，黑格，法律，”纽约时报“， 在一篇社论中，说法律是不相称一个民主和说，没有一个国家可以被delegitimized如果它举行忠于其民主原则。

所有这一切并没有说服，TIAA - CREF在其投资组合的变化。也没有Vilkomerson他认为他们的情况，在基金的夏洛特会议主导的股份制活动家。 Vilkomerson，在接受记者采访时说，抵制美货运动至今已在美国没有重大成就。但在欧洲，BDS的压力有结果。在瑞典和挪威，大型养老基金从自己的投资组合，以色列的国防电子公司，Elbit系统有限公司。

原因是：“。违反国际法”公司的参与在建设和经营的以色列和西岸无视一个的司法国际法庭其中发现的墙2004执政党之间的分离障碍（的，自杀以色列政府分爆炸案已大幅下降以来的屏障上升）。

BDS的支持者举出另一个成功的例子是其在一个有争议的项目链接在西耶路撒冷和约旦河西岸的以色列定居点的参与国际活动，对法国的跨国公司威立雅交通。荷兰的ASN银行剥离威立雅控股本身在2006年，该公司后来放弃了该项目。

缺乏企业发展服务的成功在美国引起了一个问题：多大的影响可以一个基层运动在那​​里既不管理，也不国会，也不广大公众是倾向于采取美国的最亲密的中东盟友以色列的国家有东， - 这将是一个巴勒斯坦国的建立定居点的任务 - 根据“日内瓦第四公约”是非法的。

您可以联系作者Debusmann @路透社

贝恩德Debusmann是路透专栏。是他自己的意见。

美国给予死刑制度是不公平和任意的。种族，金钱和政治中扮演主要角色。由于社会的最终处罚不能适用公平，它不应该在所有应用。

因此， 一份报告说，恰逢后重新恢复死刑，35年前，在今年七月在美国最高法院的裁决，死刑被任意所以心血来潮，提示一个为期四年的悬挂的，达残酷和不寻常的的惩罚。因此，许多国家改写了他们的法律和最高法院于1976年返回的问题时，它说，新的章程已采取淘汰制的随意性。是吗？

而不是根据死刑资讯中心，一个总部设在华盛顿的非营利组织，一直保持超过二十年的跟踪死刑。其报告的结论是死刑，1976年后，“已被证明是一个失败的实验。适当的指导陪审团，死刑可以管理相当的理论在实践中没有奏效。三十五年的经验教给试图解决这个系统是徒劳的。“

死刑信息中心不单单是观看太碎来修复系统。今年三月，当伊利诺伊成为美国第16届国家没有死刑，州长轻拍昆，民主党和长期的死刑支持者说：“我已得出结论，我们判处死刑制度存在固有的缺陷。前检察官和法官，我提出的证据... ...我确信，这是不可能设计一个制度是一致的，那就是自由，种族，地理或经济情况的基础上的歧视，并始终得到它。“

类似的看法，促使纽约和新泽西州在2009年废除死刑在2007年和新墨西哥州。在世界范围内，死刑一直在稳步下降，现在只有5个发达国家的做法。美国，其中处决的人数已经萎缩，因为1999年的高峰98仍然是世界顶级的刽子手之一。

在2010年，它排在第五位，仅次于中国，伊朗，朝鲜和也门，沙特阿拉伯和利比亚。这是不适合他或她的国家的形象，作为一个地方一类以上的独裁统治和人权侵犯者最活跃的移交死刑的美国人平均的组。

是保留死刑在美国，至少在理论上，“最坏最坏的”，但一系列的研究表明，这种做法是不同的。例如：在2003年，加里李奇微，美国历史上最严重的连环杀手谋杀48人，在华盛顿州的认罪。他被判处终身不得假释，并不遗余力地在他​​超过20年的时间内勒死的年轻女性的详细信息返回被判处死刑。

大力寻求真理的过程？

在弗吉尼亚州，贾斯汀沃尔夫而被定罪的谋杀案为聘用在杀害一名毒贩被判处死刑，于2002年。本周一位联邦法官推翻定罪，9年后，沃尔夫被送往死囚，裁定，检察官忽略或隐瞒证据和“扼杀了一场轰轰烈烈的求真的过程。”

如何坚持这样一个过程，可以在对抗美国的司法系统的蓬勃发展，是值得商榷的。领主罗森鲍姆（ http://tinyurl.com/65eaxw6 ），在纽约Fordham大学的法学教授，曾形容法庭扯皮“赢家通吃，烧焦的大地争奇斗艳，使美国的试验类似的运动眼镜。 “

除了在法庭上的利害关系。在那里，错判不是孤立的事件，但系统性缺陷的干，根据童心项目，总部在纽约的组织，已经使用DNA测试，赢得了人身陷囹圄或死囚的自由。

通过DNA自1989年以来，被宣布无罪的272人的17人被判处死刑。其他死囚的成绩有他们的判决推翻了上诉（在大多数情况下改为终身监禁）。在这两个州和联邦法院，根据死刑资讯中心，上诉审查发现，在三分之二的情况下作出错误。

，抛出了一个公平的进程中缩小数万名符合资格的情况下，以“最差最差的”，有助于解释为什么死刑判决和处决自2000年以来下降了约50％的全国性的概念问号。少于一百谋杀绘制在执行一个被判处死刑和少得多的结束。

即使在得克萨斯州，美国领先的刽子手，把死刑的定罪杀手数目已下降，在过去的几年。因此，它下降死刑和加入世界其他地区，被认为是最终处罚铁窗生活的大部分时间？

（您可以联系作者在Debusmann @路透社）

贝恩德Debusmann是路透专栏。是他自己的意见。

美国部署导弹装载的遥控飞机，杀死六个国家的敌人，科学家们的工作更加先进的军用机器人，并有一个悬而未决的问题，对未来战争的主机。更耐人寻味的是国外的要求。

如：“是的收割机操作员，家乡的街道​​行走后一个合法的目标作为战斗员的转变？由塔利班同情者的攻击（他）的战争，根据国际法或家庭状态的法规下的谋杀行为？的人杀死作为战斗员的权利，而在控制站停止战斗员在回家的路上？“

这个来自英国国防部的一项研究 ，是指谁经营，从在美国的基地，全副武装的无人驾驶飞机在阿富汗或巴基斯坦的飞行7,500英里远的美国飞行员发动空中战争。收割者无人机舰队的主力，已经从十年前大约50增长到今天的7000多。这是增加在快速剪辑，在其他领域削减国防开支的影响。

大部分为军队的无人机任务飞行从拉斯维加斯克里奇空军附近的空军基地。中央情报局（CIA）的一个独立的，比较隐蔽，程序，批评为目标的暗杀。中情局的无人机是从弗吉尼亚州北部经营。飞行员，坐在电视屏幕前驾驶舱，运行没有物理风险也好，一个在战争中从事男性的新颖性。

远程控制的空中战争的辩论 - 无人驾驶飞机是在阿富汗，巴基斯坦，也门，伊拉克，利比亚和索马里行动 - 已在很大程度上局限于学术界和智囊团，民用和军用。但报告这个星期，美国中央情报局已延长无人驾驶飞机打击索马里提示要求仔细审查了战争的结束和暗杀开始。

然而，这不是一个问题，罢工与公众和美国的政治家，在很大程度上是有利于无人机罢工的一个和弦。它们被视为一个廉价的方式针对的敌人，没有美国人员的生活风险。看似无风险的消除塔利班武装分子，“基地”组织武装分子和其他各类反美分子的缺点是在美国没有什么明显的关注

有什么缺点？尽管高的技术和精确制导武器，无人驾驶飞机爱好者谈谈“外科​​手术式打击”之际什么，但造成“间接伤害”，平民死亡的委婉说法。
附带损害，往往会造成更多的新兵反美的原因。即使没有造成平民伤亡，遥控战争玷污了美国的形象，和少数人使用无人驾驶飞机的亲密盟友，在他们战斗的国家。

“西... ...作为一个懦弱的欺负，就是不愿意冒险自己的军队，但很高兴远程杀，英国的一项研究指出。”

科学和智慧

这种情绪是不可能挥洒在西方舆论，也不会停止武器的发展，使人们联想到超过四十年前由已故科幻作家艾萨克阿西莫夫的观察：“最悲惨的生活方面的权利，现在是科学集比科学知识更快集智慧。“

这给我们带来21世纪战争的各个方面，超越的优点和无人驾驶飞行器（无人机）的利弊，因为无人驾驶飞机也被称为。虽然他们经常被称为“杀手机器人”，他们“人在回路”武器，如此命名是因为一个人的飞机导航，按下按钮，发​​射导弹。

如果当切出循环的人类 - 并打开一个新的战争时代 - 科学家之间的辩论是一个问题。 “这... ...将只是一个很小的技术步骤，使无人驾驶飞机火灾单靠自身的传感器，或共享信息为基础的武器，无追索权到一个更高的，人类的权威，”根据英国的研究。

实际上，这将意味着生命和死亡的外包决定的计算机程序，控制空中和地面的机器人。有待回答的问题是复杂多样的：如何让机器人告诉一个无辜的叛乱？你能编入机器人的战争，交战规则的法律？你能与他国的文化灌输一个机器人吗？

如果出现错误，造成了平民的死亡，谁就会被追究责任？该机器人的制造商？设计师？软件的程序员吗？指挥官在其单位的机器人如何运作？美国总统谁给开了绿灯？

一些科学家去年九月等悬而未决的问题感到震惊，形成一组，机器人武器控制的国际委员会，是一个国际上的监管和控制的武装机器人辩论的迫切。发生这种情况的前景看起来渺茫。

（您可以联系作者在Debusmann @路透社）

贝恩德Debusmann是路透专栏。是他自己的意见。

这些数字告诉由禁毒执法中的种族差异秕的刑事司法系统的故事：非裔美国人，约12％的美国人口，占33.6％的药物被逮捕，37％的州监狱服刑犯人药物的时间罪行。

这些数字来自人权观察组织，总部位于纽约的看门狗，这在其2011年抱怨有关药物监禁的“压倒性的种族差异 “的报告，尽管事实上，黑人和白人在从事与毒品有关的罪行的同等利率。量刑项目，跟踪差距在过去25年的刑事司法系统的一个宣传组，说黑白差距不能被解释不相称的犯罪行为。

While African-Americans are the minority most affected by racial disparities, they are not the only one, according to Human Rights Watch: “Black non-Hispanic males are incarcerated at a rate more than six times that of white non-Hispanic males and 2.6 times that of Hispanic males. One in 10 black males aged 25-29 were in prison or jail in 2009; for Hispanic males the figure was 1 in 25; for white males only 1 in 64.”

Such statistics have been studied for years by academics, lawyers, and law enforcement experts but public debate has been subdued. This is changing in the wake of sharply critical reports timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon's declaration of the war on drugs in June. There is growing recognition that the war has been a costly mistake.

But winding it down would require fresh thinking at all levels of the government and the criminal justice establishment and there is little evidence of that from the man who, in January 2004, declared that “the war on drugs has been an utter failure. We need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws … we need to rethink how we're operating in the drug war. Currently, we are not doing a good job.” That was then-state Senator Barack Obama, no stranger to drugs in his youth.

In his memoir, “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance”, he wrote that when he felt down “pot had helped, and booze, maybe a little blow (cocaine) when you could afford it.” Good thing he wasn't caught – many of the young black men arrested for drug offenses and thus getting a criminal record find it virtually impossible to get a job.

Their plight is documented in a detailed examination of racial inequality in the American criminal justice system, a book titled “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness “, by Michelle Alexander, a civil rights lawyer. She argues that the crackdown on drug use initiated by Nixon revived old racial biases and are a new form of segregation.

“Once you are labeled a felon,” she writes, “the old forms of discrimination – employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights … than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America, we have merely redesigned it.”

THE WORLD'S LEADING JAILER

This is a harsh judgment and food for a debate which might hasten a long overdue review of the criminal justice system and an investigation into why the United States is the world's leading jailer. It has 5 percent of the world's population, 25 percent of the world's prisoners and an incarceration rate five times as high as the rest of the world.

There will be no quick answer, and no quick exit strategy from the drug war. Legislation is pending – the National Criminal Justice Commission Act – for the establishment of a blue-ribbon commission to review the criminal justice system and recommend reforms within 18 months.

The bill is sponsored by Lindsay Graham, a Republican Senator from South Carolina, and Jim Webb, a Democratic Senator from Virginia, and won the backing in June of the US Conference of Mayors, an organization that represents cities with a population of 30,000 or more. The mayors noted the need to reduce incarceration, reform drug policies and eliminate racial disparities.

How likely is this to happen? There is reason for pessimism. Since Obama took office, the rhetoric on drugs and incarceration has changed. The president's drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, said early in his tenure he would drop the phrase “the war on drugs” and observed that “we cannot arrest ourselves of this problem.”

The new language did not translate into deeds. The Obama administration's 2011 drug control budget includes a 13 percent increase in anti-drug spending for the Pentagon and an 18 percent increase in the drug control funds for the Bureau of Prisons.

The biggest obstacles for change are entrenched interests. By some estimates, getting the prison population back to where it was (in terms of percentage of the overall population) before the drug war began would cost the jobs of at least a million people working for the criminal justice system. Not to forget the damage reduced incarceration would do to the flourishing private prison industry.

(You can contact the author at Debusmann@Reuters)

In his inaugural address on January 21, 2009, President Barack Obama promised that “we'll restore science to its rightful place.” Mark that down as a broken promise, as far as a key element of America's nuclear energy future is concerned.

Obama's remark on science was a swipe at his predecessor, George W. Bush, whose administration was frequently criticized, often with good reason, for allowing ideology to trump science on subjects as varied as stem cell research, the morning-after birth control pill and the environment.

In contrast, Obama's most prominent move to shelve a major scientific project — The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository — has been driven not by ideology but by a toxic combination of Nimbyism (from “not in my backyard”), electoral politics and high-handed leadership of America's Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That combination led to the closure of a project that, over its long gestation period, involved more than 2,500 scientists and has so far cost $15 billion.

Power-generation and nuclear waste are not usually subjects of great public interest but they made headlines and sparked renewed debate in the wake of last March's nuclear accident in Japan, where spent fuel rods (nuclear waste) posed a greater radiation threat than the core of the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Those rods were stored in pools of constantly circulating water — the system used at most US nuclear plants — and dangerously overheated when an earthquake interrupted power supply to the pools.

Over the past few weeks, the steadily increasing waste from more than 100 nuclear reactors and the repository once meant to hold most of it deep underground, have been the subject of a string of reports and congressional hearings. They shed light not only on the need for a decision on what best to do with the waste but also on the fact that science on this issue has not been restored to the “rightful place” Obama promised in his eloquent inaugural speech.

According to a report by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), more than 75,000 metric tons of nuclear waste are now held at sites scattered around the country, an amount that is expected to double by 2055. What's the best option to storing these hazardous substances? “A geologic repository is widely considered the only currently feasible option for permanently disposing nuclear waste,” the GAO's leading expert on energy matters, Mark Gaffigan, told a Congressional subcommittee.

It was called in response to a report by the GAO, the research arm of Congress, which discussed several options for storing nuclear waste and spelled out the reason the Department of Energy shut down Yucca mountain — not because it was deemed unsafe but because it lacked public support in Nevada. That's not surprising — Nevada Senator Harry Reid, a Democrat, has waged a relentless campaign for more than two decades to kill the project, saying it was unsafe. That's his opinion, not universally shared by scientists.

HIGH-COST ELECTORAL VOTES

When he was campaigning for the presidency in 2008, Obama came down on the side of Reid, a stand that helped him beat his Republican rival John McCain, the Arizona senator firmly in favor of Yucca, and win the hotly contested state's five electoral votes. Again, politics trumped science. Those five votes must count among the most expensive in American electoral history. Soon after taking office, Obama pulled the plug on Yucca mountain by writing it out of the budget. The project's offices in Las Vegas were shut, the staff fired.

Up on the mountain, 4,950 feet from the Mojave desert, on the edge of a former nuclear test site 95 miles from Las Vegas, the gate has been closed to the entry of the five-mile tunnel drilled into the mountain to serve as a graveyard for nuclear waste.

But the project isn't quite dead, yet. There is a pending lawsuit by the states of South Carolina and Washington against the Obama administration and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Their argument: Yucca was a congressionally mandated program (the legislation dates back to 1982) and cannot be killed by administrative fiat. While a Washington appeals court ponders the issue, a Blue Ribbon Commission set up last year continues to ponder “recommendations for developing a safe, long-term solution to managing the nation's used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste.”

The commission, which has until next January to complete its work, came up with draft recommendations in May. They include this one: “The United States should proceed expeditiously to develop one or more permanent deep geological facilities for the safe disposal of high-level nuclear waste … Geologic disposal in a mined repository is the most promising and technically accepted option available for safely isolating high-level nuclear wastes for very long periods of time.”

In other words: Something just like Yucca as long as it's not Yucca. The commission did not say in whose backyard they were looking to open such a site.

You can contact the author at Debusmann@Reuters.com.

America's costly efforts at nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq came under intense scrutiny this month in critical reports and a gloomy Senate hearing that prompted a memorable assertion. “If there is any nation in the world that really needs nation-building right now, it is the United States.”

That came from a Democratic Senator, Jim Webb, who continued: “When we are putting hundreds of billions of dollars into infrastructure in another country, it should only be done if we can articulate a vital national interest because we quite frankly need to be doing a lot more of that here.”

Webb spoke at the confirmation hearing of the veteran diplomat President Barack Obama nominated to be his next ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, who faced questions from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that left no doubt over the growing impatience of US lawmakers with a military and financial commitment that is producing limited progress.

Webb's juxtaposition of spending on Afghanistan and the state of things in the United States – a stalled economy, stubborn unemployment, an aging infrastructure – is made more often in online debates and private conversations than in official hearings. But it is a subtext for a debate likely to grow in the campaign for the 2012 elections and feature both Afghanistan and Iraq as money pits, object lessons for ill-conceived development projects, and lack of foresighted planning.

A report by the bi-partisan Commission on Wartime Contracting issued early in June set the tone. “US troop withdrawals from Afghanistan are scheduled to begin in July 2011, and the US military presence in Iraq is scheduled to end by December 31, 2011. But America will leave many legacies in both countries carrying large sustainment costs long into the future.”

The commission, the report said, saw no sign that the Pentagon, the State Department and the US Agency for International Development were making plans to make sure that the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan could operate and maintain, on their own, the vast array of projects built under US government contracts, from schools and clinics to hospitals and power plants.

An examination of a decade's wartime contracting in the two countries, says the report, had identified tens of billions of dollars of waste. Unless the US paid prompt attention to the “how to” of maintaining, operating and paying for the projects it will leave behind, “the United States faces new waves of waste in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

One example of money already wasted, and beginning to waste even more: the Kabul Power Plant, built with $300 million in American taxpayer money. “It is little used and the cost to operate and maintain it is too great for the Afghan government to sustain from its own resources.”

WHAT SUSTAINABILITY?
That raises a question: what resources? According to a World Bank estimate, 97 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product (GDP) comes from “spending related to the international military and donor community presence.” Annual government revenues run to around $2.5 billion, funding the Afghan security forces costs more than twice as much.

The word “sustainability” sounds very much out of place in this context though it is sprinkled liberally through the Contracting Commission's report as well as a report issued a week later by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It focused solely on Afghanistan and questioned the long-held theory that development projects in conflict zones helps to stabilize them.

That report pointed out that Afghanistan now receives more US civilian assistance ($320 million a month) than any other country and it addressed a problem which looks more difficult to solve than any other: “Foreign aid, when misspent, can fuel corruption …”

No doubt about that. Both in Afghanistan and Iraq corruption is the stuff of legend, featuring tales of government officials becoming multi-millionaires, warlords getting kickbacks for allowing development projects to go forward, contractors for the US government over-billing to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, suitcases stuffed with $100 notes being shipped out of Kabul airport, newly-rich Iraqis and Afghans buying extravagant mansions in Dubai. In Kabul, the word for this is “Afghaniscam”

Things are not getting better, notwithstanding dire warnings about the corrosive effect of badly-spent aid. In 2008, the year the Commission on Wartime Contracting was set up in response to reports on vast misappropriations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the two countries ranked 176th and 178th out of 180 on a widely-respected corruption index. It is put out annually by the Berlin-based watchdog group Transparency International.

On the 2010 list (of 178 countries), Iraq ranks 175th and Afghanistan 176th. Myanmar and Somalia occupy the bottom slots.

Which helps explain the frustration about nation-building priorities Senator Webb expressed at the Senate hearing. He was one of the two senators who introduced a bill, in 2007, that led to the establishment of the Commission on Wartime Contracting.

Its members need not fear running out of work.

(You can contact the author at Debusmann@Reuters)

The war on drugs is a waste of time, money and lives. It cannot be won. The world's drug warriors are out of ideas.

Fresh thinking is of the essence. Governments should consider legalizing drugs to take profits out of the criminal trade.

Filling prisons with drug users does nothing to curb the billion-dollar illicit business, one of the world's richest. Drug use is a public health problem, not a crime. Arresting small-time dealers does little but create a market opportunity for other small fry. Destroy drug crops in one region and cultivation moves to another. Cut a supply route in one place and another one opens up.

By one group or another, each of the above points has been made about long-running drug policies that bring to mind Albert Einstein's famous definition of insanity — doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

But never before has such criticism come from an international panel of establishment figures with such high profiles as the Global Commission on Drug Policy which presented a devastating assessment of the drug war in New York on June 2. Its 19 members include former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, three former Latin American presidents (of Brazil, Mexico and Colombia), former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, Richard Branson, the flamboyant billionaire chairman of the Virgin group, and Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou.

Other commission members of impeccable mainstream respectability: George Shultz, US Secretary of State during the Reagan administration; Louise Arbour, a former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and now president of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank; former Swiss president Ruth Dreifuss; Javier Solana, former European Union foreign affairs chief; Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian Nobel literature laureate, and Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes.

Whether their report will bring about change remains to be seen but it looks like a milestone on a long road toward reforms that some see as inevitable. “Today is the day when we start to end the war on drugs,” Branson said at the commission's New York news conference.

The commission's report does not mince words: “The global war on drugs has failed. When the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotics Drugs came into being 50 years ago and when President (Richard) Nixon launched the US government's war on drugs 40 years ago, policymakers believed that harsh law enforcement action against those involved in drug production, distribution and use would lead to an ever-diminishing market in … drugs such as heroin, cocaine and cannabis and the eventual achievement of a 'drug-free world.'”

“In practice, the global scale of illegal drug markets – largely controlled by organized crime – has grown dramatically over this period.”

A KIND OF ARMS RACE

So has bloodshed and violence as government forces and drug trafficking organizations engage in what the report calls “a kind of arms race” – tougher crackdowns prompt criminal mafias to respond with greater force.

Exhibit A for this arms race is Mexico, where at least 36,000 people have died since late 2006, when President Felipe Calderon declared war on his country's drug cartels and unleashed the Mexican army to fight them. The death toll has mounted year by year, the army is not winning, and there is no end in sight.

“Poorly designed drug law enforcement practices can actually increase the level of violence, intimidation and corruption associated with drug markets,” notes the report. It echoes many of the points made in a 2009 by a commission that focused on Latin America but did not go as far as recommending that governments debate and seriously consider “models of legal regulation” of all drugs, not only marijuana.

The driving force in the Global Commission, a private initiative launched in Geneva in January, is former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who also led the 2009 Latin American group together with former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo and former president Cesar Gaviria of Colombia.

Latin America is the world's largest exporter of cocaine and marijuana, largely to the insatiable US market, and a major supplier of opium and heroin. Around the world, drug producing countries are vulnerable to what Moises Naim, a scholar at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former Venezuelan trade minister calls “the politicization of criminals and the criminalization of politicians.” It's a process that has given birth to “narco states,” a label that has been used for countries as far apart as Venezuela and Afghanistan.

There is reason to be skeptical about the prospect of change within years rather than decades and the commission alluded to it – “a built-in vested interest” in continuing with policies that focus on enforcement, interdiction and eradication. It is an entrenched anti-drug establishment that provides employment for thousands of people, from narcotics agents and intelligence analysts to prison wardens.

One of the essential elements required to change that system is spelt out in the first of the commission report's 11 recommendations: “Political leaders and public figures should have the courage to articulate publicly what many of them acknowledge privately: that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that repressive strategies will not solve the drug problem and that the war on drugs has not, and cannot, be won.” ( You can contact the author at Debusmann@Reuters )

Would there be fewer sex scandals if the world were run by women?

The question comes to mind in the wake of scandals that involve two powerful men, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and came to light almost simultaneously. Strauss-Kahn resigned as head of the International Monetary Fund four days after being arrested in New York for allegedly trying to rape a hotel maid. Schwarzenegger, the former governor of California, admitted having fathered a child with a woman on his household staff.

The two cases are in a different league – Strauss-Kahn is accused of a violent crime, while Schwarzenegger betrayed his wife, Maria Shriver, who stood by him when he campaigned for the governorship under a cloud of accusations that he had groped women during his rise to action movie superstardom.

One of the first public comments on the Schwarzenegger affair came from a prominent woman, former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, who suggested it showed that the United States needed more female politicians. “Another guy guv admits 2 cheating on his wife. Maybe we need more women governors. Guys: keep ur pants zipped,” she tweeted.

The message reflects conventional wisdom – men are more prone to sexual misbehavior and adultery than women. “I'm confident predicting there would be fewer sex scandals if women were in power,” former White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers wrote in her 2008 book “Why Women Should Rule the World.”

Such predictions are based in large part on the long list of men caught up in scandal at the pinnacle of power, both in politics and business, by adulterous affairs, sexual harassment or rape.

Women barely figure in recent history. One of the rare cases: Iris Robinson, a married member of the Northern Ireland parliament whose affair with a teenage boy came to light last year.

In Taiwan, a decade ago, a Taipei city councilwoman, Chu Mei-Feng, left politics after the leak of a video showing her having sex with her married lover.

All this pales in comparison with Bill Clinton having sex with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, or Elliot Spitzer cavorting with $4,000 prostitutes when he was governor of New York and pushing a crusade against prostitution.

And there is no female equivalent to Italian President Silvio Berlusconi, whose frequent involvement in sex scandals has so enraged Italy's women that hundreds of thousands of them came out in protest rallies in Rome and other cities demanding that he resign for having disgraced Italy.

Does this mean that women are morally superior, as some contend, or better able to control their libidos, or less likely to be caught because they are better liars, as an online commentator on the website Jezebel suggested?

POWER, NOT GENDER
A study by Dutch researchers comes to a different conclusion – power, not gender, is the main driver of infidelity.

“Power … increases infidelity among women as it does among men,” according to the study, by a team from the universities of Tilburg and Groningen. Its findings suggest that “women in high-power positions are as likely to engage in infidelity than men.”

The Dutch researchers arrived at their conclusion by analyzing anonymous responses to an online questionnaire from more than 1,500 readers of Intermediair, a weekly magazine aimed at professionals, just under half of them women.

According to the study, due to be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association of Psychological Science, the reason why high-powered women rarely feature as protagonists in sex scandals is straightforward. “There simply aren't as many women in positions of power as their male counterparts,” according to the study's lead author, Joris Lammers of the University of Tilburg.

Case in point: the US House of Representatives, where female members account for just 17 percent of the 435 seats. Of the 100 US Senators, just 17 are women. The numbers are even worse in the corporate world, at the CEO level.

Women run just 15 of the Fortune 500 companies, the biggest US corporations.
These numbers are forecast to change, and so are behaviors now thought typical of men. “As more and more women are in greater positions of power and considered equal to men,” says Lammers, “familiar assumptions about their behavior may also change (and) lead to increased negative behaviors that in the past have been more common among men.”

Until that happens, one has to look back into history to find women who used their power to help satisfy outsize sexual appetites. Their most famous representative is Catherine the Great, the 18th century Empress of Russia, said to have had so many lovers that miniature portraits of them covered the walls of her bedroom. Her lust was so legendary that when she died, rumors spread through Russia ascribing her death to an attempt at having sex with a stallion. Historians dismiss this as a myth. ( You can contact the author at Debusmann@Reuters )