Subjects Archives: Democracy

Germany is really riding a rollercoaster these days, but this is no amusement park; there’s lots of suspense but rarely joy – and quite a few politicians are very unwell! Not only politicians!

“We need to decide if we want to live in a world in which autonomous weapons systems identify and attack targets faster than humans can think.”

Mapping out the connections between the initiation of the permanent war economy, the drive for US empire, and today’s factional disputes and similarities among political elites.

The payment of Mr. Guaidó’s representatives is a serious conflict of interest. Does the Guaidó team represent the Venezuelan people or the interests of the government that is paying their salaries? It is a point worth reiterating: a foreign politician is being paid by the United States to influence policy in the United States.

The main impeachment thrust aims at minor events in the Ukraine. The whole approach ignores, indeed covers over the fact, that the whole U.S. policy of violently turning the Ukraine into a U.S.-dominated satrapy and advanced base was achieved by a Democratic administration.

In this episode of Money on the Left, we speak with historian Alison Collis Greene about her book No Depression in Heaven with an eye toward contemporary debates around the Green New Deal. Subtitled The Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Transformation of Religion in the Delta, Greene’s book critiques what she calls the […]

Once the Bernie Sanders threat has subsided, Elizabeth Warren will be required to further neuter herself to allay the fears of billionaire Democratic donors. Once upon a time not so long ago the U.S. corporate media was a livelier place, where the rich people that owned the presses argued among themselves about the destiny of […]

If Warren ever finds herself without media’s bête noire to draft off of—assuming her policy stances remain the same—the media headwinds can be expected to get much more intense for her.

The impeachment drive is quickly gathering steam, and who can have any sympathy for that man in the Oval Office? But I wonder if some enthusiasts may not be digging deeply enough.

The months ahead will show how many degree traces of the revolutionary spirit—exemplified by two recent events in Berlin—will somehow find their way into the Berlin and German political scenes.

Jakob Feinig, assistant professor of human development at Binghamton University, joins Money on the Left to discuss the history of political organizing and activism around money in the United States, from the pre-Revolutionary period to the New Deal era. Characterized alternately by periods of widespread “silencing” and mass mobilization, the history of money politics that […]

Under the UK’s constitutional monarchy, we are subjects not citizens. Rewriting the constitution should be an urgent priority for a Labour government, argues Hilary Wainwright.

Sweden might have some credibility if it banned weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. It is not enough to be moved by the tragedy in Yemen. Action is necessary.

In Saxon and Brandenburg, the leading parties held their lead and headed off the threat by the AfD. But in both states they were painfully weakened.

The three states in Eastern Germany now facing elections (two of them on Sunday) will be forced to decide on coalitions; no party will be strong enough to rule alone, most likely not even in two-party tandems.

We are in the middle of a political upheaval on Israel/Palestine in the United States, and Americans who are concerned with Palestinian human rights live for these moments. They are the moments of potential change: When more tarnish is added to Israel’s image, and Americans get a clearer picture of what the Jewish state actually means for non-Jews under its sovereignty.

What follows is a somewhat complex tale of what happens when a labor union, structured to be unaccountable to the rank-and-file membership, embraces a system of labor-management cooperation rather than a class-conscious understanding that workers and their employers are adversaries with fundamentally opposed goals and desires.

Before the Berlin Wall was torn down we all made sarcastic jokes about its official designation by East German (GDR) party leaders as “anti-fascist protective barrier”. But hearing racist ranting by AfD leaders now hoping for victories and seeing gangs of marching thugs with barely–paraphrased Nazi slogans we must wonder if perhaps that scorned terminology also contained just a bit of truth.

In the past couple weeks, President Trump has gone on a racist, red-baiting rampage against four congresswomen elected in 2018. The four women of color–Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley–are now collectively known in the media as the “squad.”

The problem for any negotiations is that the U.S. position is untenable. The U.S. wants to prevent Iran from exercising its right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968) to enrich uranium even to low levels. It is this impossible position by Washington that will prevent diplomacy.