…death and maiming and destruction and some of them will not be felt for years and years and that’s pretty heavy stuff so any any commander-in-chief who sends young men and women into war should do it with a full heart with a Very heavy heart and with a full sense of responsibility for what’s going to happen to them President
Clinton’s challenges were numerous balancing economic growth and stability with the needs of the American people and making decisions on the international stage that had far-reaching consequences it’s a stark reminder of the immense burden of power But it also raises the question can one person or even a small group of people truly represent the needs and desires of an entire nation it’s a question societies have been grappling with for centuries in some countries debate and discussion are welcomed while in others critics are silenced and the voice of the people is drowned out I’ve come to Russia to talk with people who have chosen to challenge the power at the Top while authorities are trying to control society’s behavior are also thinking about some consequences of their own behavior when they beat somebody on the street and that person decides to publicly come Out and says hey I was beaten you know not from fighting but from the people who were walking who were trying to bring me to justice and when this started first time I completely understood who you really are I’m going to do everything to change it that’s amazing to me you know just tell your stories of things you experienced I I tell them what I’m talking about yeah Intel everything what makes people to connect you to the TV you know to really do something to help and started to like you so you hit them all with the truth and the truth but they cannot do anything they will be forced to see it yeah the state is my adversary the Russian state finds itself threatened by the demand of people speaking their minds raising their voices against corruption in abuse of power not just here but all over the world people are clamoring for more control of their own destinies they’re demanding more say and how their lives are shaped this brings me back to the question that brought me here to begin with does society work best when it’s organized around a strong leader or is there a better way is democracy really the best way to run Society after my conversations in two very different parts of the world I think I’m finally starting to grasp how the power of governance comes comes from the governed from me and you and billions of others all working together to shape our own collective future we’ve been making history for thousand years now but it’s the power of us the power of the people that will shape the future Thanks for joining me on this journey to explore the power of us.
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Don’t tell me you haven’t imagined doing this sitting behind this desk occupying the most powerful seat in the world I’ve done it and even when you’re playing the role of the president of the United States you get a sense of the awesome power we entrust to one person the fate of our
Nation sometimes that of the entire world rest on that person’s shoulders but sometimes we disagree with the person at the Top If We Had real democracy we wouldn’t have to protest we want more control of our own Destinies does society work best when organized around a strong leader or is there another better
Way what makes a good leader now he’s the chief of the community you have to convince people who may disagree to go along with you how do we escape from Bad leaders women started coming to me because the government are not doing anything or the
Tyranny of the m i was beaten on the street it was like first time I completely understood who you really are if you’re a gay in Russia and is democracy really the best way to run Society Washington do like to say this lobbying is briber everyone’s biased so everybody actually having to
Go to make laws would be pretty crazy this is my journey to discover the ties that bind us and the common Humanity inside us this is destroy of us societ is made up of individuals like you and me each one of us living Our Lives chasing our own hopes and dreams but
It’s not everyone for Themselves we return to leaders to help us work together enforce the rule of law and protect us from harm we give up some of our individual freedom for the sake of the common good it’s a social contract we’ve been making for thousands of years I’m heading into the jungles of
Panama to witness this social contract in the making today an indigenous people known as the um will hold their traditional ceremony to select a new Chief you can see they like to play soccer or Nelson who learned English at a school in Panama City is taking me to the ‘s equivalent of Capitol Hill this is the local house we use this for meeting or for T what we would call Lodge yes yeah once every four years
Dozens of villagers Gather in this large to choose their new leader today we are looking for another person to be that we call El El El no is the chief of the community okay so right now we have two people in front that’s two person candidate the people like the
Nominee yes the only requirements to run for office or that you have to be over 30 and have a calm demeanor you see all the people are going to make a line so longer lines is the winner ah okay so we’re going to see right now who’s going to be El that’s pretty
Straightforward there’s no secrecy no no secret who votes for who and who you Want the winner is him now he’s the chief of the community okay the election is simple and transparent there’s no mudslinging no hard feelings on the losing side in fact the runnerup serves as a kind of vice President and everyone joins the Victory celebration now what do you have to do as chief the person that going to be the chief to be very responsible and I don’t know how to say Pati passion yes sweet feeling for yes for the village yes I bought for him I can see that he’s
A smart man and of course he’s my father inw got It This is incredible to see something like this true democracy in action of course the imar need to work together to survive so it’s necessary for one person to coordinate the group to get things done that’s why they entrust power to the chief this kind of Corporation has helped human societies flourish all
Around the world it’s a reminder of what’s at the core of our own political system how simple it could be most modern societies are exponentially larger than the empor village leaders are now expected to protect millions of people in the nation state now it is time time to take long
As strives let us then move forward together I want to know what the weight of that much responsibility feels like I’ve come to New York City to meet someone who was leader of the Free World for eight years President Bill Clinton we as a society have this
Amazing rule of law and democracy why do you think it came out so strong well I think it it came as a reaction to popular dissatisfaction with monarchies the idea that everybody could have their say that people ought to be in effect self-governing they ought to pick Representatives it really caught
Hold it was this idea that sparked the American Revolution but representation doesn’t mean slavishly following the will of the majority wait they wait they’ve had their say the PCT between elected officials and the people they represent is much more complex there’s 330 million plus people in this country you can’t
Have a referendum on every decision you can represent the will of your voters by trying to carry out what you pledge to do in the election but even there you have to convince other people that may disagree to go along with you then you have to deal with things that were never
Discussed in the election both emergencies and things that you know about that are going to have a huge effect 5 10 15 20 years down the road and so a lot of this will of the people involves having the people believe that you’re at least keeping them informed you’re telling them what
The deal is and if you do something that seems to to be unpopular you explain why give me an example of two of the really roughest decisions as our leader you had to make I remember when um Mexico was about to go under in 1995 and like economic said they got 24
Hours to live and then their currency will come crashing down and you’ll be flooded with immigrants it was going to be a disaster and we don’t help them but the American people were like 80% against doing anything because they said oh they’re got themselves in trouble so I had the
Executive authority to do it and I did it and everybody said oh this is terrible they’ll never pay the money back we’re going to be ripped off we’re being taken advantage of all Mexico paid the loan back 3 years early with more than $500 million in interest economic decisions may impact
Hundreds of millions of lives but no choice is harder for a leader to make than sending their own citizens off to war if you have to use Force you put the lives of Young Americans at risk so you need to be darn sure you’re doing the right thing before
You go around killing people because they’re consequences of that people didn’t want me to send so in to throw a military dictator out in Haiti turned out no one was killed mhm majority of the people were against my trying to end the slaughter in Bosnia but there were
250,000 dead people and 2 and a half million refugees the risks from inaction to the world would be far greater than action people didn’t want me to go into Kosovo but I didn’t want turned into Bosnia and they’re still holding on to their democracy none of those places worked out what you’d call
Perfectly but we gave him a chance the only thing that really matters is whether do you leave things better than you started uneasy lies the head that wears the crown what shakespare road of Kings Still applies to our elected leaders today President Clinton decided to make a risky loan to
Mexico he put the lives of American soldiers at risk to prevent genocide in Kosovo these decisions were not driven by a desire to be popular but for the long range common good that’s what good leaders do but around the globe a wave of populist leaders is coming to power their quest for
Popularity May unleash mob mentality and persecution of the minority you kill us we kill your [Applause] country in the late 1960s the Castro in San Francisco became a mecca for the gay community people came here to enjoy the social contra fact that heterosexuals took for granted contribute to society
Harm no one and the government will stay out of your Private Affairs well since then attitudes and laws have changed at least here in America but there are still places around the world where simply being the person you are harming no one is a crime in 2013 13 Russia passed a law
Banning so-called gay propaganda activists say it triggered a jump in discrimination and violence against the LGBT community I’m on my way to meet a Russian immigrant couple Ole Dov and Demetrius Stan in Russia Oleg was a television host and Dimitri was a successful psychologist I want to know why they
Left behind their careers to come to the US so now you’re a high-profile person you got a TV show going on yeah when did you publicly come out it was in 2013 yeah I came out on Facebook I can show you that post today and for me is a
Time to be brave openly and honestly I want to tell you that I am gay orientation is not a determining factor in my attitude to life and people well said World changed because I was on my work I posted on Facebook and I just went to to the
Hall and you know people just you know was like a like I don’t know yeah and people didn’t say hello to me didn’t smile to me I was like invisible person and so after that it was like 2 weeks my contract just was not renewed not renewed yeah and I
Felt how dangerous is it we have threats it was Nightmare you you know it’s many messages Facebook text that story this story were overwhelmed it wasn’t dangerous I know we cannot hide our body language and maybe sometimes my body Express who am I and I was uh beaten on the
Street it was terrible experience because police did nothing so I I went to the hospital because I you know my my love in the hospital and they just asked me who are you you can’t be here what are you do are your family or what and I I just needed to lie
Something like I I’m his boss or something it was like first time I completely understood who you really are if you’re a gay in Russia OLG and Demitri didn’t feel safe at home anymore so they went to New York to let the storm from oleg’s post blow over yeah
Actually we seated for 7 days just an apartment in New York yeah we just need some time to get away from everything yeah OLG and Dimitri eventually went out and explored the city the openness and tolerance they discovered inspired them seeing how life could be they refused to
Accept their loss of Rights in Russian Society instead they asserted them by getting married in the US after our marriage after our ceremony somebody stole our pictures from Facebook and published these pictures in the newspaper the article say to be gay is it’s a shame he’s abnormal we need to
Kill them so they need to kill us uh it was really terrifying that was a reason why we stayed here yeah you only have each other to hold on to here it was difficult choice we had our careers in Russia we had all our friends and
Families there yeah but here we can you know to to go walk walk yeah yeah and it’s okay it’s normal I can tell people yeah it’s my husband so now you’re happy and you feel safe yes here in the US once the shift started change came
Rapidly what do you think it would take for Russia to be more relaxed about 100 years 200 years unfortunately situation is getting worse there is a lot of stereotypes in Russia Russia has a different history and a different Human Rights Movement they need more strengths to overcome these barriers toward
Tolerance well I wish you both long life happiness thank you more than two centuries ago the United States Constitution gave its people certain rights and among them was freedom of expression America would be a new type of society one where people would be free to be who they really
Are the LGBT community had to fight for those same freedoms until recently now Ole and Dimitri have engaged in a struggle to move Russian Society forward I hope they succeed because in the end any society that stops people from being who they truly are is bound to Fall there will always be divisions in this Society disagreements between political religious and cultural groups When leaders exploit these divisions they can steal power from the people and keep it all for themselves in 1971 General edain took control of Uganda with the military coup I must make sure that every ugandans get a
Fruit of Independence he inherited a country hungry for a strong native born leader after decades of subjugation under British rule Amin was initially greeted with cheers but his regime soon became one of torture and murder he earned the nickname The Butcher of Uganda to try to understand how power can descend into tyranny I have come to Africa to meet with someone who spent years in our mean’s inner Circ uganda’s former minister of Health Henry cha I mean had eight years in those eight years of murders killings eliminations how many people it was a
Difficult figure to come by 150,000 half a million we will never know do you know why I mean did these things as time went on power was getting sweeter and sweeter by the day it always were wanted and he he thought he could carry on it seems that the longer he was
In power M the more violent he got a me knew that he came into Power by the gun and he used to tell his soldiers that the gun is your sister is your mother use it to get whatever you want many innocent people were killed they were thrown on the
Lake in the Lake Victoria and they ended up going onto the river and you’d find dead bodies floating on the river well this sounds like there was just no law they’re using prisoners to beat their fellow prisoners to death not knowing that the others will come and do the same to
Them it is the kind of brutality you can’t explain they you detain to commit these atrocities yes I was advised in fact that my own brother was also killed in that way what was your reaction to your brother’s death it’s not um something nice talk about The social contract between a country’s leader and its citizens is based on trust the solution must be determined by the people themselves the leader protects the citizens in exchange for the power to make decisions that affect everyone but a dictator betrays this trust and is only out for himself
ID Amin robbed hundreds of thousands of ugandans of their lives in his mad quest to hold on to power the government of Africa this strengthen thank you very much when Ain began targeting members of his own government Henri chamba started to fear for his life what would you do to them you will
See after the murder of two cabinet ministers who are friends of mine someone sent me a Note UV s335 sl6 what is that those are the numbers of security cars used by Yamin in his execution missions someone left a note saying that he had heard some security voice in that car talking about me being the next victim for execution I felt it was time to
Go cha managed to resist the Temptations to flee immediately he waited for an official government trip to the UN in Geneva and from there found asylum in London you went to work after that to spread the word about him I decided to fight Amin in a way that he could never
Fight me with a gun I said I would use a pen I gave interviews to senior journalists about what a was doing to the country I also worked on the book the state of blood for them to know what was happening in our country Henry’s writing was crucial in spreading word of idia
Means tyranny around the world am mean’s ever increasing lust for power led him to invade neighboring Tanzania foreign powers began to take action that means our and cleared grip began to loosen what is actually happening in Uganda now troops are deserting the Army and I mean is in hiding on April 11th
1979 Ed Amin was overthrown by Ugandan Rebels and Tanzanian forces what do you think kept him in power for so long I mean was very un predictable he would do things that you think were absolutely normal and yet in the next minute he’s doing the exact opposite and that kept him in power
Beyond what one would have expected brutality and unpredictability go together the English historian Lord Acton famously said power tends to corrupt absolute power corrupts absolutely few leaders have lived out that phrase more vividly than Ed I mean once he receives power there was no moral line he wouldn’t cross to keep
Power the Spectre of amine is still with us around the globe strong men still covered power will do anything to get it and anything to keep it we must be ever Vigilant against leaders who want power for themselves not for us the people when people are robbed of their
Power when they lack a voice in their own fate they face a choice accept it or fight [Applause] back but in the rural lowlands of Northern Kenya one group has found a third way they are walking away and building a new [Applause] Society political science Professor Faith ogeto OA is traveling from the capital Nairobi to learn More welcome thank you very much a pleasure to be Here the village is called umoja and its founder is Rebecca [Applause] lolos she and the other women here have created a society with without [Applause] menca tell me a little bit about the village and about the women that live here yeah we have 48 women in this Village we have new women coming the way now you see the women are making the
Houses the women who have come here belong to Kenya’s samburu tribe a society where men hold all the power in samburu culture most women can’t own property they themselves are considered the property of men in our community women has no right we are not educated they didn’t go to
School they don’t have jobs they don’t own livestock so they have nothing to live on you know there someu people we are polygamist and maybe you will start disliking you the first wife and start beating you until he start kicking you out of that home if you don’t also give
Children then you are useless you’ll be isolated nobody wants you so all the women that have come here really have very difficult stories they have been beaten they have been threatened to be killed they have beened Rebecca herself was abused and evicted from her home that’s when she left to found
Umoja we started umoja in 1990 decided to build the village so that we can stay together and live together when the men started seeing toting success now they wanted to kill me they said if we kill her then everything will go down the men come and beat the women they robbed the women
They wanted to KI us out of this land even my own mom told me stop and I was telling her I’m not going to stop how did you protect yourselves we didn’t have any protection at night when we see them we wake up we start running but we
Refused to go out of this land completely once we have already built and we stayed here we live here it was hard for them to get us out of this land the women of umoja endured the attacks and the raids on their Village finally stopped umoja has now become a thriving Community the women generate income by making bead jewelry and selling them to tourists they raise livestock and are experimenting with growing their own crops but umo’s Crown Jewel is its School 2 1 2 this is where the women are creating a new society different from the one in which they were
Raised they hope the boys growing up here will learn to treat women as equals and take that attitude with them when they leave the village as adults we have seen education is the key for Every this Village is like a training center with teach our boys to respect the rights of the women we are proud of our sons if Rebecca has her way umoja is just the beginning of a new broader culture where women have a say you always move forward I’m always moving
Forward whether they say they are killing me I’m not scared I’m always going forward so our life is always improving the women of umoja were born into a society where they had absolutely no power where the men treated them like cattle so they built a new Society they are rewriting the social
Contract giving women a voice in the New Order and imbuing their sons with the belief in gender equality theirs is a young culture but the future looks bright new societies begin with the hope of solving old problems ethics and Corruption concerns at the center of a federal bribery investigation but human nature means
That certain challenges arise again and again like the influence of money can it be stopped from eroding the very Foundation of democracy today’s hearing is about more than greed it’s simply a tale of betrayal in a democracy power is ultimately supposed to rest in the hands of the
People but it doesn’t always work that way lobbying greed and Corruption strip voters of their power selling influence to the highest bidder no one knows this better than former lobbyist Jack Abron great to see him thanks so thank you got a table back here okay from our first hearing Mr
Aboff’s insatiable greed came to the four one of K Street’s most successful lobbyists Jack became Infamous when he was convicted of taking illegal Kickbacks wire fraud tax evasion and bribery he spent nearly 4 years in jail for his crimes some races were impacted by lawmakers connections to disgraced
Lobbyist Jack abramof part of what Democrats labeled a culture of corruption okay people go to Washington first thing they start saying when they’re campaigning is I can’t be bought I’m there to represent you right and it doesn’t last that long no I think almost everyone shows up like that but over
Time and sometimes it’s only a few hours and sometimes it takes a few years eventually The Lure of the political money which they need to get reelected becomes so strong that in fact they get affected so what happened with you you were obviously very good at it well I
Was deep in the game I opened up a couple restaurants where I let them eat like it was a cafeteria when they wanted to go play golf I would put him on my airplane and fly him to St Andrews to play of the old course and uh ultimately
What happened was an article got written in the Washington post about my lobing practice on the front page and I became the Great London Washington and I at first didn’t think I did anything wrong but I decided to go back and reread the million emails that I had sent in the
Course of being a lobbyist and I started rethinking myself and started thinking you know what I cooperated I plad guilty and away I went at the end of it I realized it was wrong this system where people pay to play in Washington paying to influence government is all too common for the
Powerful corporations that can afford it it’s estimated that they spend over $9 billion lobbying our elected officials every year see there with about 535 people between house and the Senate how many of them are clean well clean in the sense of not allowing people to give
Them money very few maybe a dozen on both houses maybe maybe but most of them unfortunately do and they excuse it by saying this is the system we live in and this is how things are done this is not the way a democracy should work no and
It wasn’t the way this country was supposed to work what should we be doing to make things a little easier a little better if the money were removed it would have an immense effect not only on the system in terms of our political system but on the individual Congressman
There are other things also for example term limits uh I was against term limits when I was a lobbyist I wanted every Congressman to die in office when they’re 150 years old cuz the same way when you have a car right you have a car
You run out of gas you don’t go get a new car you go to the gas station and put some gas in right yeah so if you’ve bought a congressman and you’re a lobbyist you don’t want to have to go buy a new Congressman you just want to
Put a little more gas in the tank and people when they get there at the beginning they’re not really corrupt they’re not part of the system get them out of there before they become corrupt well I’m going to tell you something I’m glad you went to prison
Because you had time to think and now you on a great Cru say you’re on the high road thank you money is power so many people in this country feel they don’t have a voice that the government isn’t listening to them that their vote doesn’t count and that’s the
Truth as Jack knows all too well you have to pay to play and our American political system I believe if we’re going to make our democracy work if we’re going to make it truly representational we’re going to have to take money out of the equation and put people back
In but a seismic shift in the balance of power is already underway the explosion of social media means everyone can express their will 24/7 will technology make leaders more accountable or will it make leaders obsolete corruption repression and tyranny all rob people of their rights in society but the internet has given them
A new way to be heard when When leaders monopolize power can technology help people take it back to find out I’m headed to San Francisco I’m here to meet one of the founders of Twitter Evan Williams he’s moved on from Twitter now and created a new internet startup
Medium I’m always curious about if you’ll pardon the expression people like you m where do you come from who are you how did you get into this I grew up on a farm in Nebraska rural Nebraska literally in the middle of the corn fields I was uh pretty isolated growing
Up and this was pre- internet I had a computer I learned programming when I was in high school and when the internet started emerging in the late ’90s what I believed at the time was once everybody had a voice we would all be smarter because good ideas would rise to the top
And truth would rise to the top and we’d be able to say well that’s wrong this is good let’s talk about it I’m thinking about my father was a barber and the barber shop was Town Hall mhm so everybody even heard on the radio or
They read the paper and they came to the barber shop and discussed it is Twitter the extension of that yeah we’ve we’ve used that analogy before of the global town hall turned out it was more complicated than that so when we built Twitter it was with the ethos of
We want to connect as many people as possible and let information flow as freely as possible and with an assumption that most people are going to use that in a good way which is true but the degree to which people who are The Bad actors can spoil it for other people
We didn’t really design in well enough and so I compare it to the real world and saying even if you believe most people are good people you still May lock your door when you leave your house so the internet is a good thing we can all know more about each other and
Perhaps be smarter that’s the Hope on the other hand we have the dark side M which side’s winning it’s really pretty equal match right now I think what we found is that what gets rewarded on the internet is attention it doesn’t reward quality of attention it doesn’t reward accuracy of
Facts and people have figured out oh what’s the cheapest way to drive attention have a car crash and it gets this self-reinforcing cycle so if you look at a car crash then the internet thinks oh you like car crashes here’s more car crashes Evan sees these digital car crashes clickbait
Trolls and fake news as threats to the internet promise of giving power back to the people have you come up with any idea about how to go about this I’m going to call it cleanup the way that I now think about the internet is it’s neither good nor bad the technology that
Makes it easier for people to get what they want it’s not that dissimilar from other Technologies if you think about agricultural technology help people get what they want and need nourishment and food with less effort but then the technology kept going and it feels like probably gone
Too far the fact that we have access to these cheap calories at all times and that feels good in the moment but is Way Beyond nourishment what are you doing with your new company to change what people get from the internet with medium we’re definitely trying to move things in the
Right direction we’re trying to create a space for for nuance and depth I think that’s the nourishment that may not be there in the junk food and we’re trying to make that really work if we can get to the point where internet forums and social media truly reward thoughtful engagement a new form
Of democracy could emerge we could all vote all the time on every law Representatives could become obsolete but Evan believes direct democracy is strong with danger what we’re seeing today is the ability for everybody to at least have a say and it’s in many instances been phenomenally powerful online activism has been
Incredible but it goes both ways the alt-right movement which was really powered by people getting together online who may have Fringe ideas in their local community but they find someone who agrees with them and collectively they get critical mass has been pretty scary as well so the idea of direct democracy today you
Know 10 years ago I would have said well that’s going to be awesome because the right things will happen and now I don’t know so is there hope for direct democracy in the future I think today’s information environment underscores the importance of representative democracy things are so
Complex today much more than they were 200 years ago that the idea of let’s all vote on the healthcare Bill and like the complexity of that to understand it we need to elect people who who we trust to make those decisions for us but if everyone can vote on the laws themselves
You can’t stop me from voting just by gerer mandering my district MH I think what we’re unhappy with is the representatives not necessarily the representative democracy but what I think the internet will drive us toward is demanding more transparency from the representatives and being actually responsive to their constituents needs
And I think it’s more possible to make that happen now Evan Williams believes that the internet like the printing press the radio and television before it is fundamentally changing the relationship between we the people and our leaders it gives us direct and instant contact with government it has the potential to rest
Back power from leaders who have gone off course but it could also take democracy in a frightening Direction steered by hateful hackers vengeful trolls the task ahead of us now is learning how to use our new power wisely since the dawn of civilization there’s been a tug of war between society and its
Leaders now we need leaders to get things done but if we give up too much power tyranny ensues people lose their right to choose their own destiny today we stand at a Crossroads technology has given billions of us the power to make our voices heard louder and clearer than
Ever today we have the power to shape society and be accountable for the world we make now I’m hopeful in spite of the dangers that lie ahead because I believe that But ultimately there is one power that is greater than any desperate the power of the human spirit I believe That
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