Donald Trump stepping into office.

January 20, 2017. 180 years after one of the most controversial, and some would say racist presidents of the US finished his second term, another controversial - and some would say racist -president steps into the White House. So what can we expect from Donald Trump?

It doesn´t matter what you do during your presidential years, people will always remember you for the bad decisions. What you need to do is minimize the amount of these bad decisions. Donald Trump is historically the least favourite president ever to step into the office, and as we all have heard a thousand times, the majority of the Americans did not vote for him. It will be interesting to see whether the new president sticks to his outrageous promises that he said during his campaign.

Will he build The Wall? Will he ban all muslims entering the country? Donald Trump needs to be very careful about what he does in the next four years, because I´m sure he doesn´t want to be remembered by all those negative conotations that people now remember Andrew Jackson.

Andrew Jackson set the bar very high to be remembered as a bad president, and he didn´t even use Twitter. Good luck. I guess.

Democracy 2.1. - Czechs are searching for the ideal president

            The Prague Café. No, that´s not a coffee-house I reccomend you visit. It is a term denoting the unhappy populace of the Czech capital, Prague. Or so the current president says.
             In 2013, the Czech Republic experienced the very first direct election of the president. After a tight first round, Miloš Zeman stole a narrow victory with 54% of the popular vote. Take a note, America, popular vote. Miloš Zeman, a poltician known especially for his close relations with Russia, was popular mainly in the countryside, whereas his opponent Karel Schwarzenberg, in big cities. Prague was one of those cities where Mr. Schwarzenberg won by a big margin. Since then the Prague citizens held many public protests against the president, because of his disgraceful behaviour in office. One could make comparisons to the president elect Donald Trump. Trump supporters (ehm, I mean Zeman supporters) have since then called unhappy citizens as "Prague Café", mainly based on the fact that people from Prague like to spend time in coffee-bars. If you find nothing wrong with that, thats because there isnt. What at first was considered a slur was later used by everyone to describe anti-zeman activists. Even by themselves.
              After all these years people are starting to finally understand that Zeman might not have been the right choice, and many persons of the public sector and organizations have searched for the right man/woman to stand against Zeman in the 2018 elections. One of those people is Karel Janeček, a Czech matematician, philanthropist and billionaire. And this guy truly is a genius. In 2012 he presented a evolutionary project called Democracy 2.1. that introduced a whole new concept of voting. The idea is that the votar has multiple votes. Not only plus votes, but also one minus one. This would create a fairer result, because one would simply not vote for the lesser evil as one does now (hence the presidential election in the US) but could freely choose what he feels is right and also stop a biggot or even an extremist being elected.
             Mr. Janeček initiated an internet game called President 21, which uses this system on finding the right candidate for the presidential election in 2018. You have three positive votes (thumbs ups) and one negative (thumb down). Since the launch in December, 40 thousand people have joined in to play, but the game has been criticized for being a game of the Prague Café. That is probably true, since the last place is being occupied by Miloš Zeman with 17 thousand negative votes and about 3,5 positive ones. It will for sure be interesting to watch how the game goes on. Janeček has said that he will try and share the game even offline, especially so that older people can join in (and vote for Zeman) and that he will also eventually erase people who publicly decline the idea of running for office.
            There have so far been 265 people nominated for the presidency in this game, about 100 of whom I find respectable to even consider as qualified, and about 20 of them who I wouldnt mind seeing in the Prague Castle in two years. Have a look yourself and maybe cast a cheeky vote or two? Or three? I genuinly find this electoral system progressive and worth a try, even if not in a such a big election as the presidential one is.

PS.: Yes, Jaromír Jagr has been nominated and to this day holds the 14th place with 1500 positive votes and 300 negative ones. :P

Was George Orwell a genius? A little comment on the Czech governement initiating an anti-fake news unit.

The Ministery of the Interior of  the Czech Republic is launching a special unit that will browse the internet and look for so called "fake news" websites. They will then fact check the articles published on these sites and expose them publicly. The world is in a weird place right now, and due to the great popularity of social platmorms such as Twitter and Facebook, many people tend to read and share telic falsehoods about controversial subjects such as migrants and conspiracy theories. The idea of this unit is to stop these things being spread.

The Czech Republic although not an ex-soviet country has a big problem with russian propaganda. At least thats wha a great deal of state officials have claimed. Looking at the Russia´s interfierence in the recent presidential elections in the US, it is fair to say, that that is clearly possible. A regular Czech citizen (and surely any other citizen) encounters fake news on daily basis.

It is quite natural, that if you have a certain oppinion or attitude towards something you will happily share that respective article without bothering to factcheck it. If I believe that money growns on trees, and I see a headline "Experts find money growing trees, economy of XY shoots up!" I will inform all my friends of this fact and since its 2017, I will share the article on Facebook. That is the reason why April fool day is so popular. Because people tend to be fooled from time to time. (Hence the spagetti-growing trees April fool joke ages ago). But how often do people behave like fools? Does society need a government unit that will tell you what the truth is?

"Dont believe everything you see on the internet" - Abraham Lincoln. I have seen people actually sharing this quote with Abe Lincoln´s name attached to it. Several times. Sure, some of them might have shared it for the banter, but I assure you the majority really believe Lincoln said this. Nevermind the fact that there was no internet in Lincoln´s time. So, if people can share nonsence like this, what stopps them from sharing serious fake news headlines like "African migrants riot and fight the police in France" with a video attached. Video of different people doing something completely different in a different country. I got in an argument the other with my friend about this. Took my 5 minutes on Google to prove him wrong. I´m not saying above mentioned events don´t happen, what I´m saying is people don´t seem to care if what the read is true.

So yes, I agree with the government on that note. Most people do. But with politicians being one of the least respected people in the Czech society (sad yet true), will their verdict on something being true help the situation or will it, more likely, be counter productive? Ivan Bartoš, the leader of the Czech Pirate Party, calls this new unit "Ministery of Truth", obviously reffering to the fictional ministery in George Orwell´s 1984. And to quote the man himself: "As long as person´perception of the truth can be externally verified, then even a lie can become truth.".

It will certainly be interesting to watch how this unit tackles the problem, but I expect this anti fake-news squad to be dissmissed once a new government comes to office.

PS.: Did you check whether the Orwell quote was real?