In iPhone we trust?

"To do a great right, do a little wrong", William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

The Apple vs FBI dispute over the San Bernardino iPhone is a case with far reaching long-term consequences for all. No easy solution here. The balance between privacy and security is obviously is where people are focusing their attention. But while an important discussion, I don’t think this is what makes the case an extraordinarily complex one. We have solved this tension in so many ways in history. While for example we admit the access of banking records, we protect the privacy of the patient/doctor relationship or the lawyer/client privilege even for the most diehard criminals and terrorists. No. The case brings other issues. It exposes the tensions between the global technology companies and their internet ecosystems that hover different jurisdictions (democratic or not) and our judgment over the moral legitimacy of those same jurisdictions. We would not be having this discussion if every court of the world would be like an US Court, would we? This tension between global technology companies and different nation states and national public interest is manifesting itself in other disputes like taxes, just to cite one. And this is no different. It also touches individual corporate freedom. Apple thought it had protected itself from the pre-Snowden government interference by basically not creating a backdoor for its new IOS system. Can it be forced to create one? By just the US Legal System? Why not another Legal System? Believe me that this case will be a headline in history books many years from now. And whoever ends up judging this case will need the same extraodinary legal finesse that Portia showed in  saving Antonio's pound of flesh while respecting Venice legal precedent. A tall order indeed. 

Band of Brothers

"Extremism is so easy. You've got your position, and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right you meet the same idiots coming around from the left". Clint Eastwood

What unites such disparate figures as Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Marine Le Pen and Jeremy Corbyn is in fact a total disrespect for the workings of modern democracies for the past six decades. The need to compromise, negotiate and find common ground. It is the same discourse against the establishment, of the pure outsider that will come to clean the rubbish of centrist sell-out politics. No matter that these pure white knights are anything but. It just requires a complete suspension of disbelief to associate political revolution to Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn that have been living out of politics for the past 40 years. Or that Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump can in any dimension represent the common working class voter.

On the left, the heritage of modern social democracy represented by the centrist policies of Blair and Bill Clinton is being ripped apart mercilessly. And on the right, pure parochial nativism reigns untrammeled. And on the left and right, social media and cable TV just allows everybody to live on their perfect bubble of ideological purity. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, once said that everybody has the right to its own opinion but not to his own facts. What he did not anticipate was that we would reach a time where facts would be a superfluous accessory to opinions. This is the brave new world of politics we seem to live in.

Have we reached Peak Civilization?

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities", Voltaire

For all my life, and I think like many in my generation, there was a belief in the gradual progress of civilization around the globe. At different speeds, no doubt, but the direction was clear. That the better angels of our nature would slowly conquer and defeat our longstanding barbaric demons. After Paris, the belief is still there but the naiveté about its linear spread has been shattered. The dark corners of globalization are there to haunt us for a long time. And it is not only ISIS. Just look at the no man's land where the Mexican cartels rule. The common thread is there. Chaos, anarchy and the fanatical pursuit of identity amidst state rule failure. And every time we empty the bucket something nastier emerges. We defeat the Colombian cartels, we get the even more savage Mexican ones. Out goes Saddam, Assad and Khadafi and ISIS takes over. So a new normal awaits us in this valley of shadows. One that must live with terrorism without being terrorized by it.  One that defends resolutely our values of tolerance, respect for diversity and inclusiveness in the face of those that want to spread hate. The eagerness to reach quick solutions in the face of tragedies like Paris is natural, but the wrong course of action. This is the path that can easily lead us, for example, to profiling entire groups people in an act reminiscent of some nasty periods of our history. It is unfortunate that this will be a long-haul fight, but it is the reality. And reality cannot be wished away.

In a way we must be like the Spartans who refused to build walls around their cities because they feared it would weaken their resolve to fight. Myself, I will rather perish in any terrace, restaurant and street of our diverse and open societies than live in the closed and fearful countries that some people seem to advocate for us to transform into. It is the only way to prevail.

Many shades of risk

"The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct -  Marcus Tullius Cicero"

Unlike the hound of the Baskervilles, dogs are barking everywhere when it comes to risk in this turbulent world. You have geopolitical risk that brews in the South China Sea, Middle East and Eastern Europe. The risk on the Euro from the whole Greek drama, the consequences to the world economy of the US initiating an upward interest rate cycle, the unstable situation in large emerging economies like Brazil, Russia and Turkey. And China's transition to a new economic paradigm .To all of this markets reaction seems to be relatively sanguine. Like in the cartoon above, is it because of a framing issue? Or we just simply think that dogs that bark don’t bite?

The chicken game

A totally reckless driver against one without a driving wheel....

When a vote is free and democratic but not really fair...

"For it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy", Thucydides

The finger

True or not, the now famous Varoufakis finger to the Germans mirrors the sorry state of European relations. Today another European summit ended in total disarray. With the absence of any trust between the parties, we are clearly walking in the direction of a Greek exit from the Euro. In 2010, this would have had significant economic consequences for the bloc. If today these apparently look more manageable, the political consequences are in turn far greater and unpredictable now. Faites vos jeux....

Expressive Varoufakis