Cicero's Songs

  After a week of slush and damp, tonight there is a hard frost in Tallinn. The general election campaign has started with the parties submitting their lists of candidates and announcing their programs. The polls seem to show a polarization of views. Although the Liberal Reform party of PM Kaja Kallas is set to remain as the largest party in the 101 seat Riigikogu, the steady rise of the far right EKRE seems to place them firmly in second place, replacing the Social Liberal Centre Party, who seem set to lose several seats. In addition to the Conservative Isamaaliit and the Social Democrat SDE, there is a fair likelihood that a new party will join these in Parliament, namely the Business/Green minded Eesti 200. The Greens and the Libertarian "Right wingers" look like they will struggle to gain seats. A Moderate Reform/SDE/E200 coalition would be a good outcome, but the numbers will have to fall just so, otherwise there remains the chance of another Centre/Isamaa/EKRE coalition...

In December 1905 Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman (C.B.) became Prime Minister and a month later he led the Liberal Party to a landslide victory. It was by some margin the most radical government to date.  115 years ago C-B still chose the old Liberal campaign slogan of “Peace, Retrenchment, Reform”.  Over a century later James Oates thinks the future success and prosperity of our country now depends on rediscovering our Radical traditions and has written three articles on translating them into a coherent programme for the future.  This is the first essay: “Peace”. Peace: The Place of Britain in the World The challenges we face Liberalism, from the Midlothian campaign of 1880 onwards, has always been an outward looking ideology.   We understand that there are core democratic principles that do not change, no matter what the country or the culture. These principles are enshrined in the United Nations Charter and include an unbreakable commitment to the dignity of ...

On August 9th 1974 Gerald Ford took the oath of office to become president of the United States. In his brief speech he said: " My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over... Our  Constitution  works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men." 43 years later, the American Republic is being tested in a way it has never been tested in the 241 years since the declaration of independence.  It is not just that Donald Trump is a vulgar, boorish, lecher . It is not just that he has consistently lied about his businesses and has consistently used mafia levels of intimidation and fraudulent promises in order to cheat his way out of trouble . It is not just that his absurd self-regard renders him utterly unfit for any public office. It is not even that Trump was over three million votes behind in the popular vote. There are three intersecting crises in America today. They are economic, political, and constitutional. The United States is no l...

In October 1978 a then obscure Czech playwright named Vaclav Havel published an essay called The Power of the Powerless . It was a tragic time for those in Central or Eastern Europe who believed in freedom. The Soviet system had made advances across the globe and seemed to be as solid and enduring as it was soul crushing and brutal. Yet, as history shows, appearances can be misleading. Within only a few weeks the election of Pope John Paul II began a process that lead to tumult across the Soviet World and the eventual downfall of Communism. Havel's moral manifesto became the root of a political renewal which still shapes European society today. Today there is a new struggle in Europe and across the world. It is a battle between those who seek an open, free and global society and those who oppose that vision. A nascent planetary consciousness is emerging as information becomes ever more accessible and the possibility, indeed the necessity, of debate more urgent. The creation of a...

The average Human brain consists of at least 86 billion neurons and perhaps ten times more glyial cells. Yet each neuron, through synapses, can connect to as many as ten thousand other cells. The estimated number of neural connections is thus in the order of trillions: in fact an estimated 0.15 quadrillion connections . Brain specialists believe that each Human Brain may be capable of processing as much as 2.5 petabytes of information through these synapse connections. This is about seven times larger than the entire library of congress .  Incidentally, to build a computer of similar power on current technology would require the power of a small city to run it. For the brain i t is not the total number of cells, but the connections between them that makes its processing ability so powerful.  As for the Brain so for other systems. In information systems, the value of an individual computer, no matter how fast its processing power or how large its memory, is as nothing compa...

OK, I know readers of this blog now "get it": Russia under Putin is a bad guy and a serious threat to global peace.  However it is now a race against time: Putin's greed and contempt for all laws, whether domestic or international, is sending the Russian economy straight onto the rocks. On current trends, the Putin regime is creating so much damage that Russia has a very short window of maybe less than 3 years before its sustained challenge to the international system leads to firstly economic crack up and secondly political meltdown. The latest numbers must make for sobering reading in the fetid Kremlin corridors where Putin struts, basking in the short-run popularity of a "good war". As of last week, Russia had already seen $70 billion leave the country in 2014. The forecast for capital flight from Russia this year is now an eye-popping $170 billion. Just to put that in context, the total Russian reserves before the crisis broke were about $470 billion. ...

There is a lot of hot air being blown about by people who have only just noticed what the implications of Russian policy in the Crimea actually are. Some of it is along the lines of "making a stand", as if forcing oligarchs wives out of Harvey Nicks will have a material effect on Putin's decision making. Some of it, by contrast is hand wringing at the impotence of the West. I do not -yet- believe- the Putin=Hitler narrative, but there are now some very uncomfortable parallels, and it does not take a Nazi level of evil to cause a major war. The reality is inevitably more nuanced and far more difficult to manage. Let us consider a few facts. Firstly, we should remember that t he fall of Soviet Communism was an act of political and economic liberation for the vast majority of the people the former Empire. The creation of full democracies in Central and Eastern Europe and the massive increase in living standards associated with this has been an inspiring achievement. ...

It is easy for me to say "I told you so". For years this blog has warned about the aggressive despotism of Vladimir Putin. For years, the use of violence and money to corrupt and weaken the West has eroded our ability to work against one of the most vile regimes ever seen. For years these warnings, and those of people like Edward Lucas, have been ignored. Now we are paying the bitter price of our greed and hypocrisy in our dealings with the Kremlin. The fact is that democracy is not all about creating the best economic standards for its citizens- although that tends to be the result of good democratic governance. At the heart of democracy is a core of moral values which have little to do with money. An open society: the rights to free opinions, freedom of assembly and the right of every citizen to not just debate but to decide  and control what is best for them, both individually and collectively, is a just cause.  After a serious of pin pricks- the Iraq war, expenses s...

A long hiatus from blogging, although there has been much to write about. I was travelling across Europe at ground level, for a change, of which more in later blogs.  One of the countries I travelled through was Germany, where despite the marvellous array of beautiful landscapes and quirky towns and villages with centuries of history to chose from, sooner or later one comes up against the appalling 12 years of Nazi rule. In the beautiful abbey of Quedlinburg we find that the sinister and creepy Heinrich Himmler expelled the church to build an absurd and horrible SS shrine around the grave of Henry the Fowler- the first king of East Frankia- that is proto-Germany, rather than West Frankia, which was proto-France. In Bamberg, an equally beautiful world heritage site, we find the "Bamberg Knight", the supposed archetype of the Aryan man- though to my eyes a rather effete looking piece .  Nazism was a kind of death cult, and the symbolism of death's head and the glorifi...

Spring has come to Estonia, and it is like the lights have been switched on after the long (overlong) winter. As always, your heart leaps as the huge chains of migrating geese take to the skies, and here and there a newly arrived solitary stork wanders along the field gullies looking for frogs. The grass visibly greens from day to day, and the floors of the budding forest are bright with snow drops and the primrose-like blue flowers, known rather prosaically in Estonian as "blue flowers". Soon the swallows too will be here and the white nights of June will echo to the Estonians enjoying the brief pleasures of the glorious northern summer. Yet work must continue, and I head to Parnu, the summer capital of Estonia, amidst April showers, to take part in a conference to discuss the future options in Estonian finance. For me, Estonian finance, as so much of Estonian society, stands at something of a cross roads. In many ways the last twenty years have been a series of exams for ...

Edward Lucas has highlighted an interesting article on the ERR website by a former RFE correspondent, Ahto Lobjakas . The basic thesis is that Estonia has, as it did in the 1930s reoriented its foreign policy away from Britain and towards Germany. Then, as now, such a reorientation is a function of new trade and economic patterns. In the 1930s, Germany overtook the UK as Estonia's biggest trading partner, and over the past few years, the creation of the Euro as increased the significance of Germany to Estonia equally dramatically. To my mind, though there is more to it than a shuffling of priorities in Estonia's government district, Toompea. Estonia has spent most of the time since independence was restored seeking to comply with the complicated rule book that sets out the terms of membership of both the EU and NATO. Once those goals were achieved, the next task was to comply with membership of the Euro. Once that was achieved, membership of the OECD and so on. Yet the fact i...

In the Cold War, there were a series of existential nightmares that kept policy planners awake at nights. One of them was the cutting of the vital oil supply lines from the Persian Gulf to the West. Today, the Iranian regime has threatened to cut the straits of Hormuz , if the United States tries to returns its carrier to its base in Bahrain. Iran has also tested a missile that could sink a carrier in the precise same place. Iran has also, rather mysteriously, shot down a US unmanned drone . The best technology to do that is in Russia. Russia, the logical conclusion must be, has supplied technology to Iran in order to do this. Closing the Hormuz straits would certainly increase the price of oil- which might save the increasingly unstable Putin regime. When one therefore thinks "cui bono?", the answer must be that Moscow and Tehran have several things in common. "Some damn thing in the Balkans" was the policy nightmare a hundred years ago. Now, it is the cutting ...

It is a saying attributed to Huey Long, the one time Governor of Louisiana, that "If Fascism ever comes to America, it will arrive under the disguise of Americanism". As I contemplate American politics in the second decade of the second Millennium, I am beginning to wonder what is coming next, because it is hard to believe that the money soaked banalities of the Republican straw poll in Iowa constitutes much that is particularly optimistic. The decline of America has been predicted for most of its history, Clemenceau famously once said that "America is the only country to have gone from barbarism to decadence, without the usual interval of civilization". Yet, in fact the United States has overcome many serious challenges in the past, not least the existential challenge of the civil war, and proved itself a robust and flexible political entity and an economic and social powerhouse. If, as a foreigner, I can hardly share the jingoist sentiments of many of its booste...