Category Archives: Sectors

Legislatures Elected by Evaluative Proportional Representation (EPR): An Algorithm

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 8, August 2019

Stephen Bosworth, Anders Corr and Stevan Leonard1

Abstract

A series of cartoon hands are pictured side-by-side against a white background. They are cartoon hands in blue, red, purple, yellow, orange, and green.

Source: Pixabay

Unlike any existing voting method for a representative democracy, this article describes a new method that gives every voter every appropriate reason to be pleased with the results. It is called Evaluative Proportional Representation (EPR). EPR guarantees that each citizen’s vote will continue to count proportionately in the deliberations of a legislative body, such as a city council. After assessing the ideal qualities needed by the office, citizens grade each candidate as either Excellent (ideal), Very Good, Good, Acceptable, Poor, or “Reject” (completely unsuitable). Each voter can give the same grade to more than one candidate. Each candidate not graded is automatically counted as a “Reject” by that voter. These grades can be counted by anyone who can add and subtract whole numbers or by the algorithm provided. Each EPR citizen’s vote adds proportionately to the voting power in the legislature of a winner. Initially, EPR’s count provisionally determines the number of highest grades (votes) each candidate has exclusively received from all the voters. However, no winner is allowed to retain enough votes to dictate to the legislature. Therefore, our simulated election limits the percent of votes any winner can retain to 20%. This ensures that at least three members of the legislature will have to agree for any majority decision to be made. We call a candidate who has received such a percentage super popular. Any non-super-popular candidate is eligible to receive at least one of the extra votes initially held by a super-popular candidate. Each extra vote is transferred to the remaining eligible candidate on this voter’s ballot who has been awarded the highest remaining grade of at least Acceptable. If such a candidate is absent, this ballot becomes a proxy vote that must be publicly transferred to an eligible winner judged most fit for office by this super-popular candidate. Similarly, all the votes provisionally held by an unelected candidate must be transferred to an eligible winner. The final number of votes received by each winner is the weighted vote each will use during the deliberations of the legislature. No vote is needlessly wasted. Each citizen is given every appropriate reason to be pleased.

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Democratizing China Should Be The U.S. Priority

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 7, July 2019

A very large crowd is depicted from above, flanked by trees. Skyscrapers are visible in the background.

Hong Kong protest, June 2019. Source: Flickr.

Anders Corr, Ph.D.
Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk

U.S. goals in relation to China, our biggest national security threat, tend to array along three main axes: military, diplomatic, and economic. But in deference to the failed strategy of engagement, we don’t use the significant normative and ideological power of democratization as a multiplier on these battlefields, nor does the prospect of democratizing China factor sufficiently in our cost-benefit analyses.

Militarily, we prioritize defense from China, but other than ongoing military support to Taiwan and the Tibet campaign of 1957-72,[1] we have not used our substantial military resources to promote democracy in China, for example in the rebellious zones of Xinjiang or Hong Kong. Economically, we prioritize U.S. market share in China, IP protection, and beating China’s GDP, technology and industrial strength. But we don’t condition our China trade on our lowest priorities, human rights and democracy.

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What is the Evidence of ‘Forced Organ Harvesting’ in China?

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 7, July 2019

Skyscrapers are pictured side-by-side.

Tianjin First Center Hospital, left, and the Oriental Organ Transplant Center, right, seen in Tianjin, 2018. Data from official records about the hospital, and admissions by medical staff, suggest it performs thousands of transplants annually. Source: Wikimedia commons.

Matthew Robertson
Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation

On June 17 in London a “people’s tribunal” chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, prosecutor of Slobodan Milosevic at The Hague, issued a judgement stating that “forced organ harvesting” has taken place in China for over 20 years, and continues to this day. It concluded that practitioners of Falun Gong have been “probably the main” source of organ supply, adding that the violent persecution and medical testing of Uyghurs make it likely that they too are victims, or at least are highly vulnerable targets for organ harvesting now and in the future. The findings have been widely reported.

The tribunal has thus reaffirmed a long-standing allegation: that the Chinese security services and military, working with transplant surgeons in hospitals, use prisoners of conscience as a living organ bank — blood and tissue-typing them, entering their biometric data into databases, and killing them on demand (or removing their organs before they die, as some Chinese medical papers suggest, and as testified to by the Uyghur former surgeon Enver Tohti) for paying recipients. Transplant surgeries typically cost hundreds of thousands of yuan (or hundreds of thousands of dollars for tourists), and recipients then take immunosuppressants for the rest of their lives. Depending on the scale of the practice, this would make it a multi-billion dollar industry. Continue reading →

Break Their Roots: Evidence for China’s Parent-Child Separation Campaign in Xinjiang

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 7, July 2019

A woman wearing a beige head scarf is pictured looking over her shoulder and holding a toddler in her arms wearing a blue and white stripped t-shirt.

A Uyghur woman holds her son outside her house in the Kashgar old town, northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. Kashgar is located in the north western part of Xinjiang province where nearly 10 million Muslim Uyghurs are living. It is considered as the crossroads linking China to Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, the city has changed under Chinese rule with government development, unofficial Han Chinese settlement to the western province, and restrictions imposed by the Communist Party. The central government of China says it sees Kashgar’s development as an improvement to the local economy, but many Uyghurs consider it a threat that is eroding their language, traditions, and cultural identity. The discord has created a separatist movement that has sometimes turned violent, starting a crackdown on what Chinese government see as ‘terrorist acts’ by religious extremists. Tension has increased with lot more security in the city including restrictions at mosques, after closing and removing most of them in the Xinjiang province, the Chinese authorities have also restricted to the women to wear veils and the young men to grow beards. Source: Flickr.

Adrian Zenz
Independent Researcher [1]

Introduction

In spring 2017, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) under its new Party secretary Chen Quanguo embarked on an unprecedented internment campaign. Subsequently, up to 1.5 million predominantly Turkic minorities (notably Uyghur and Kazakh) were swept into different types of political re-education, detention and “training” camps.[2]

About half a year after the onset of this horrifying campaign, first reports started to emerge that the children of so-called “double-detained” parents were being placed in state care. Due to a complete lack of official reporting and the state’s denial that this internment campaign is even taking place, it has been extremely difficult to ascertain the scale and exact nature of such intergenerational separation. Some informants claim to know that these children are kept in orphanages. Others, including some of the affected parents, were told that they are being sheltered in regular public schools with boarding facilities. This includes boarding preschools that can care for children who are younger than the regular school age.

The possibility that the Chinese state is implementing a larger-scale or even systematic policy of intergenerational separation of parents and children is a highly emotional topic among the affected exile communities. Few issues have the potential to inspire more concern about cultural or physical state-sponsored genocide than this one. Notably, Xinjiang’s government appears to be as nervous about the children’s situation as they are about the internment camps. When Associated Press (AP) reporters went to Hotan City’s “Kindness Kindergarten”, which reportedly shelters four children of one of their Uyghur informants and photographed the facility, they were immediately surrounded by armed police and ordered to delete their visual evidence.[3]

In the context of this urgent human rights crisis and challenging research context, this article attempts to systematically present and analyze all available evidence regarding state-initiated intergenerational separation in the context of Xinjiang’s political re-education and internment campaign. This evidence consists of government policy and implementation directives, different kinds of official reports and related state or private media articles, educational statistics, public construction and procurement bids, village-based work team reports, and official propaganda pieces that extol the benefits of the so-called “vocational training”.

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Celebrating Independence In Al Anbar, Iraq

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 7, July 2019

A soldier is visible in the background of a desert landscape. A family of three are in the foreground, facing the soldier.

Al Anbar Province, Iraq, in Summer 2007. Photo: Heath Hansen.

Heath Hansen
U.S. Army

Even though it was only 0500, the heat was already approaching the high 90’s and I could feel my sticky uniform only too well, sandwiched between skin and body armor. The Humvee engines were idling and the smell of JP-8 fuel stung my nostrils. “Hansen, 2nd platoon’s electronic warfare vehicle is down. We’ll need you in the lead element for the mission. You’re truck commander.”

“Roger, sir,” I replied to my platoon leader, “My truck’s ready, I’ll let the crew know.” More than four years had passed since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and we were still trying to secure independence for this country. It was the summer of 2007, in Anbar Province, and my company was headed out for another assignment in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

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