Author: Danielle Levy

It shouldn’t be news when a wealthy person donates money to a cause, and in many ways it isn’t. Yet, once in a while the cause is the highlight. Pierre Omydyar, founder of eBay, will through the Clinton Global Initiative invest $55-million in technology to promote government transparency and also to help people rise out of poverty. Government transparency while sometimes an issue in the U.S. is more likely to be one in many developing nations where institutions and legitimacy aren’t as settled as they are in the West. The issue of transparency is not only vital to good governance it is also important if more nations are to be able to fulfill their share in making development efforts successful. About $30-million which will be spent over three years are slated to go to organizations using technology about how people are governed and enable them to have greater say in the process. This actually continues Omydyar’s philanthropic work in the area of government transparency. The remaining $25-million will be used towards cutting edge efforts to use mobile technology to expand access to thing like banking, health care, agriculture or commerce.
Hopefully others will join in for although $55-million is a sizable sum, it is rather small if its intent is to be accomplished.

Less than a month after the demise of Lehman Brothers Iceland’s banking sector had a meltdown in September 2008. Geir Haarde the then prime minister nationalized the 3 largest banks in an effort to stabilize the situation but the Atlantic Island nation ended up with billions of dollar in debt instead. Haarde was ousted in 2009 and now Iceland’s parliament has voted to press charges against him in an effort to take a concrete step to make politicians accountable for the 2008 banking crisis and its aftermath. It is a controversial move and the measure passed by a narrow margin since some do not see this as criminal negligence. Regardless of Mr. Haarde’s case the whole issue of holding politicians accountable even in a court of law is worth pondering. Making such accountability a criminal offense does seem harsh, however. And yet it brings to mind that in the U.S. private individuals have yet to be held accountable criminally or otherwise for their role in the banking demise, though their actions had a harmful impact on many thousands. Did we go too far in the other direction?

Stephen Hawking has been called the greatest mind alive or the greatest since Einstein. Perhaps I do not know how to recognize a great mind, but I have a problem with a thought from his new book, that something can come from nothing and that the universe did not therefore need god to come into being. I may be naïve and display my scientific ignorance but I have such difficulty with the notion that something can actually come out of nothing. I wonder if that is scientifically really true and if work down the road will not show that this is not possible. As to the idea of god, unless Mr. Hawking explains what he means by the word god then his argument is weaker than it may look. It’s clear he doesn’t mean the god of the bible, but there are other definitions and concepts of a more impersonal force, or one that can’t easily be described. Regardless though, his current work, or at least the part that has caused talk, makes me wonder whether Mr. Hawking is not a scientific fundamentalist, maybe not as militant as a religious fundamentalist, but fundamentalist nonetheless.

There’s something down right scary about singling out one ethnic group. The French government ongoing expulsions of the Romas back to Bulgaria and Romania has earmarks of discrimination and prejudice. What’s even more disturbing is that the Romas, often called gypsies, are part of the 27 nations European Union and people from one nation are permitted to go anywhere. While individual countries have the right to protect themselves, from, for example mass migration from sub-Saharan Africa, it is not clear the Romas fall in that category. French President Sarkozy has vehemently defended his policy and the fact that he wasn’t as well received as he hoped at the last EU meeting is encouraging. The EU has agreed to review the situation. Meanwhile the expulsions continue. The Romas, who as a group are not wanted in Italy, in Romania, in Germany and in other countries as well, go when they are tracked down by the French police, and then find a way to come back. That may help them survive, but that doesn’t solve the prejudice they face. Let’s hope Sarkozy’s determination will force the EU into action and find a better solution.