Subjects Archives: Democracy

The title of this week’s episode is taken from an article to be published in September’s Monthly Review. The author, Jason Hickel, talks to Steve about the topic in his third visit to the podcast.

Again Victor Grossman turns to his faded history books, and to the uprisings—and then the defeat of divided leftists between 1919 and 1933. Where today is the LINKE, the party of peace, anti-fascism, anti-imperialism, socialism? It is in a crisis!

This is an open-and-shut case of the judiciary being misused to keep Trump out of the political process. Unlike during the Russiagate years, liberal authoritarians know they are operating in broad daylight this time.

“NATO—the U.S.-dominated global war machine—whose policy is ‘full dominance spectrum,’ contrary to its claims, is not a defensive organization. Its purpose has been to act as an instrument for U.S. world domination and to prevent all challenges to U.S. hegemony.” —Mairead Maguire

A recent NBC News poll found that 70 percent of U.S. voters don’t want Joe Biden to recontest the presidency next year. Sixty percent feel likewise about Donald Trump.

Whoever wants to wage war must have ammunition, bullets, shells, and missiles. Ukraine would use some 7,000 every day, while for Russia it would be about 50,000. So European ‘solidarity’ means ammunition for Ukraine.

The fearful destruction, the displacement of families, above all the killing and maiming must be deplored, condemned and brought to an end. But the underlying reasons for this terrible war, concealed in the media, must also be mercilessly examined, regardless of well-orchestrated accusations of “Putin-friendship” or “left-over allegiance to a past Soviet Russia”.

New directions in politics generate expectations due to the contrast to Bolsonaro’s management.

No, it’s not about another unknown Bunuel film. But if he had lived and knew about Finland’s election results, he could write a script and direct something similar.

The Joe Biden administration invited numerous authoritarian far-right leaders to the U.S. State Department’s so-called “Summit for Democracy”, including Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, Poland’s Andrzej Duda, India’s Narendra Modi, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, and Pakistan’s coup regime.

In pushing through his ‘judicial overhaul’, Netanyahu wasn’t destroying ‘Israeli democracy’. He was richly exploiting the lack of it.

In response to questions he received during a press conference on Monday about Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin cementing a “new era” in strategic partnership between China and Russia, the White House National Security Council’s John Kirby made no fewer than seven assertions that the U.S. is the “leader” of the world.

Responding to State Department criticism of Mexico’s popular electoral reform, President AMLO denounced U.S. “meddling”, support for coups, and the Monroe Doctrine. He said, “There is more democracy today in Mexico than in the United States… because here the people govern, and there the oligarchy govern”.

The New York Times publishes a piece explaining that democracy cannot exist in an ethnocracy, thus making “Israel” a non-democracy from inception until today regardless of intra-Israeli differences.

During an interview broadcast by teleSUR on Monday, Paola Pabon, the re-elected prefect of Pichincha, analyzed the results of the subnational elections held in Ecuador on Sunday.

Democracy has a dream-like character. It sweeps into the world, carried forward by an immense desire by humans to overcome the barriers of indignity and social suffering.

Progressive South Korean citizens have been watching with impending dread the deepening threats of political repression since the former prosecutor Yoon Suk Yeol assumed the South Korean presidency. On Wednesday, January 18, the Yoon administration took off its gloves.

The death of South Korean dictator Chun Doo Hwan signals the consolidation of a false media narrative that is misleading and dangerous.

According to the newspaper Jeju Today, the Yoon government is claiming that screening the North Korean film The Story of Our Home, shown in South Korea in February 2019 as part of a national reunification festival, violated SK National Security Law.  It is now investigating the organizers of the film screening three years later.

Today the Linke is tragically split, on both political approaches and personalities.… [M]ost worrisome is the split about the present war. Some in the Left downplay the role of NATO, call for total condemnation of Russian imperialism and total military support for the Ukraine, in agreement with most media positions.