Democracy in Crisis

Cindy Cohn: “We all rely on journalists’ ability to find out what’s going on, especially in ways that governments don’t like, to be an informed populace.” Photo credit: FAIR.org. Janine Jackson October 4, 2021 CounterSpin interview with Cindy Cohn on Pegasus spyware Janine Jackson interviewed Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Cindy Cohn about Pegasus spyware for the July 31, 2021, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript. Originally published by Fairness And Accuracy In Reporting at FAIR.org Janine Jackson: If you don’t know the story of how a consortium of journalists revealed how countries around the world have bought spyware from an Israeli surveillance firm, supposedly to track terrorists and other criminals, well, that’s understandable. Though it is a journalist-driven effort, and is leading to calls for the resignation of officials in Hungary, for example, the Pegasus Project hasn’t really gotten the pay-attention-to-this treatment from US news media. But that emphatically does not mean that the story doesn’t...

1. The World After the Corona. 2. How Militarism Fuels Climate Change.3. The Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex (MIMAC).4. China, the Belt & Road Initiative And the West. 5. The Balkans and the Purpose of NATO.6. Nuclearism, the Threat of Nuclear Weapons and What To Do. Fortunately, they are also open to anyone anywhere in the world. More about this unique, topical series on this link where you must also register to participate in the global discussion. The idea is that you watch the lecture below first and then participate in the discussion about it. You register on the above link. If you read this after the six Zoominars have taken place – just watch the lectures and discussion below. Under each video lecture below, find the discussion that took place with hundreds of people worldwide on Zoom and over 300 on Facebook Live. About the weapons in and of themselves, the existential...

While all Western media have chosen to ignore this pathbreaking analysis of this new Cold War against China, China has a natural interest, of course, in highlighting it. The (self)censorship of the Western mainstream media – and the Media Manipulation Methods, we outline – of course, are significant indicators of the crisis and decline of the West but it is only in recent years that it is practised so efficiently that there is not even a tiny crack in any editorial office wall. When it comes to China, you are being deceived 24/7 – which does not mean, as we also say, that everything is fine in China. But we do need a much more balanced view and we do not need confrontation and Cold War. To solve humanity’s big problems, we need cooperation and no more waste of human and other resources on futile militarism and US attempts at...

File photo. A portrait of China’s President Xi Jinping in Beijing, China © AFP / Wang Zhao Tom Fowdy April 28, 2021 Chinese- and Russian-funded journalism is ‘disinformation,’ but when Washington spends millions on ‘independent’ news outlets and buying journalists to get favourable coverage of its policies, it’s called ‘spreading information.’ The US Senate last week passed a bumper anti-China bill titled the S.1169 – Strategic Competition Act of 2021  Backed by Chuck Schumer (Dem, New York) as one of his biggest priorities since becoming the Majority leader, the 270+ page document contains scores of recommendations and provisions on formalizing America’s “geopolitical competition” against Beijing, including in the fields of military, diplomacy, technology, trade and more. There’s little question it will be passed into law, having already cleared the Senate and with the anti-Chinese sentiment in Washington being routinely bipartisan.  Originally published at rt.com The bill also notably pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in various...

Photo credit: off-guardian.org Edward Curtin April 22 2021 The Incompetent, Negligent, Mishandling, Miscalculating Elite Blunderers You’ve heard of them, no doubt, the U.S. rulers who can’t rule too well and are always getting surprised by events or fed bad advice by their underlings.  Their “mistakes” are always well intentioned. They stumble into wars through faulty intelligence.  They drop the ball because of bureaucratic mix-ups. They miscalculate the perfidy of the elites whom allegedly they oppose while ushering them into the national coffers out of necessity since they are too big to fail.  They never see the storm coming, even as they create it.  Their incompetence is the retort to all those nut cases who conjure up conspiracy theories to explain their actions or lack thereof.  They are innocent.  Always innocent. Originally published by off-guardian.org They and their media mouthpieces offer Americans, who are most eager to accept, what Lutheran pastor and...

Edward Lozansky April 8th, 2021 Apology and humanitarian help are a better start In his recent speech outlining the new U.S. foreign policy vision Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken made a really sensational statement: “We will not promote democracy through costly military interventions or by attempting to overthrow authoritarian regimes by force. We have tried these tactics in the past. However well intentioned, they haven’t worked.”  Originally posted on US-Russia.org’s website on March 15th, 2021 After hearing this from someone who not only enthusiastically supported the wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine, I had to reread his speech a couple of times to make sure that I wasn’t hallucinating.  Some skeptics, after seeing in this speech the usual lines about “renewing America’s strength” and that only the United States can “lead” the world, shrugged off Mr. Blinken’s disavowing many decades of U.S. forceful changes of unsuitable foreign regimes.  For...

DNS/TFF Peace & Justice course from April to September 2021 starts now… Jan Oberg has been invited by the Denmark-based Necessary Teacher Training College (DNS) to introduce six topics that are then discussed at a one-hour Zoom session with people at the College. Fortunately, it is also open to anyone anywhere in the world. The main purpose of this first session is to discuss what to learn from the global corona crisis, what longterm impact it may have and how to envision what must be done when – as we hope – it will be over. In 27 minutes, Jan Oberg goes through 8 points for discussion of the post-Corona world – some of them healthily provocative and all meant to stimulate dialogue. Why? Because there will be a very different world after the pandemic and because the only thing we can be sure of is that there can be...

Image: Adobe Stock / XY March 23, 2021 Jedediah Britton-Purdy, Amy Kapczynski, David Singh Grewal If we are to emerge from this era of crisis, we need legal thinking that operates on fundamentally different presumptions. We live in an era of intersecting crises—some new, some old but newly visible. At the time of writing, the COVID-19 pandemic has already caused nearly 500,000 deaths in the United States alone, with many more deaths on the horizon in the coming months. Since its arrival in the United States, the virus has intersected with and magnified long-neglected problems—radical disparities in access to healthcare and the fulfillment of basic needs that disproportionately impact communities of color and working-class Americans, alongside a crisis of care for the young, elderly, and sick that stretches families and communities to the breaking point. Originally published at Bostonreview These crises arise from the chronic failure of political institutions to respond...

Photo by Daniel Huizinga | CC BY 2.0 Gabriel Rockhill  March 16, 2021 One of the most steadfast beliefs regarding the United States is that it is a democracy. Whenever this conviction waivers slightly, it is almost always to point out detrimental exceptions to core American values or foundational principles. For instance, aspiring critics frequently bemoan a “loss of democracy” due to the election of clownish autocrats, draconian measures on the part of the state, the revelation of extraordinary malfeasance or corruption, deadly foreign interventions, or other such activities that are considered undemocratic exceptions. The same is true for those whose critical framework consists in always juxtaposing the actions of the U.S. government to its founding principles, highlighting the contradiction between the two and clearly placing hope in its potential resolution. Originally published at Counterpunch The problem, however, is that there is no contradiction or supposed loss of democracy because the United...

(Mahatma Gandhi, ph. Rajni Kothari, photo credit: Wall Street International) March 2, 2021 Ashish Kothari In a world that is increasingly torn by conflicts and crises of many kinds. On October 2, political and business and religious leaders in India and elsewhere remember Mahatma Gandhi, sing his praises, and pledge to live by the ideals he espoused. A day later, or perhaps the same evening, he is left behind as suddenly as he was remembered that morning. Worse, they get back to assassinating him and the ideals of non-violence, self-reliance, universal well-being, that he lived and died for. And yet it is worth asking: in this 151st birth anniversary month, does he still hold relevance in a world that is increasingly torn by conflicts and crises of many kinds? Originally published by Wall Street International Interestingly, over the last few years there appears to have been a rekindling of attention to...

“It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to inform the public. They thought it was a jest and applauded. He repeated his warning. They shouted even louder. So I think the world will come to an end amid the general applause from all the wits who believe that it is a joke.” Søren Kierkegaard’s quote is the first thought that comes to mind while thinking of the developments on the global scene and simultaneously trying to figure out the place where the Macedonian part of the puzzle fits the best. Or maybe this thought is more appropriate to describe the current dilemma the majority is facing: “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” Let’s start with the alleged fascist attempt of coup d’état and/or terrorist...

U.S. Department of State/Chinese President Xi Delivers Remarks at a State Luncheon in His Honor at the State Department December 29, 2020 Richard Hanania Across the political spectrum, there is widespread agreement that America must get serious about the threat posed by China. As the Trump administration comes to a close, the State Department has just released a document called ‘The Elements of the China Challenge’. A distillation of conventional wisdom among national security experts and government officials, it argues that the U.S. needs a concerted effort to push back against Beijing. On its first page, the document tells us that “the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has triggered a new era of great-power competition.” If there was a major intellectual thread running through Trump’s foreign policy, or at least that of the people he appointed, it was that confronting China was the national security issue of our time. America during...